Manga Studio 5 (PC/Mac)

A year or so ago, I had the free trial version of Corel painter 12, the all-singing, all dancing artwork program to beat them all. The downside was it was only useable for a month, then cost £230 to activate. Recently I wanted to get back into digital art, and found this. £35. Not bad. For the relative cheapness, I was expecting something fairly basic.Wrong.This is one of the best art packages I've come across, from the various brushes (customisable), the incredibly useful 3D pose-able figures and objects, the pen & paint settings (the watercolours act like ... well ... watercolours!) and the response of the penflow (real time, no spinning circles as the laptop tries to keep up with you) all are without fault.The initial downside for the novice is the "customisable" tool bars, which you can drag & drop to your preference. Or, if you're not careful, delete altogether without realizing it and have to reset the whole program. The other downside are the instructions. 132 pages (pdf downloads) for the "get started" instructions. The user manual is over 700 pages. And although you can just practice and dive straight in, again there is the very real chance of changing settings or losing tools without actually knowing what you've done. The video support on the Manga Studio website is much easier to follow, and quite fun to watch. But once you're used to the controls, I find it hard to fault.This is a pro-grade art program, and you get so much for your money I can't recommend it enough. The only long-term downside is more down to the type of pc you should use for it rather than the program itself. Obviously made for touch-screen pc or laptop, it isnt particularly tablet friendly.

After using Adobe Photoshop for years and shelling out hundreds of pounds for it, I decided to add Manga Studio as I wanted to explore more interesting brushes and effect in my illustrations. I was super happy with the cheap price and all the features that this software offered. Finally stabilisation for brushes and quality of strokes that helped me gain confidence with my Wacom tablet. The palettes are easy to organise and the tutorials very good. Overall, very satisfied with the software. I am now even happier that because I initially bought Manga, now I have been able to upgrade for FREE to Clip Studio Paint, which is massively expanded and improved. The capabilities are awesome, brushes and materials can be added as the community around Clip Studio offers new ones (free and pay ones), tutorials are better and better. With newer Mac OS, the old Manga Studio probably won't work, but by upgrading for free, I can still do illustrations without paying Adobe every month. I have now stopped my Photoshop subscription and moved to Affinity for the same reason.

I bought Manga Studio 5 to improve my drawing ability as I also purchased a Ugee 2150 pen tablet. The program has not disappointed although there is a steep learning curve and that is from someone who has been working with Photoshop for over 10 years, but there are plenty of tutorials online and books to familiarize the newbie. Manga Studio is truly an awesome program, capable (in the right hands) of producing outstanding graphic work and at a price that is outstandingly good value. I would recommend that if you want to improve your graphic skills you should avail yourself of the free trial offer and you will be amazed at the quality and capabilities of this program.

I have only had a cursory look at the controls of this software and already it seems it's quite complicated. I expected that much, and no doubt I'll finally get to the bottom of it, but installing the program was a nightmare. When you install it and put your long serial number in, you think you're ready to go - wrong. You then have to validate the program via the Internet - and in my case it wouldn't work. The program kept saying "Validating. Please wait." and an hour later it still said that - so I had to uninstall the program. I reinstalled, had the same problem, and so uninstalled, and then came the breakthrough: when it asked me to validate - I chose "Validate manually". The program then gave me a link to a site which I clicked and here I was provided with a 55-digit code to input into a pop up - and only then did the thing work. I know piracy is a problem but why can't the programmers behind Manga Studio 5 simplify the validation procedure? Hope my experience helps others.

Absolutely fantastic, and a genuine contender for the higher priced products. I've been a user of Adobe PS for around 9 years and always been very pleased with the service it offered to me as a 2D artist. However, upon upgrading my computer to Windows 10, the Adobe previous products were not designed to run with it without 'upgrading' to their cloud-based software, which I am not prepared to pay for, nor do I have the suitable internet connection it requires to download in the first place.So I decided to seek another option. I had heard good things about MangaStudio, and when I read the reviews on here I decided to go ahead and take the plunge to see how it measured up. If you are a photo editor, you're unlikely to be impressed, but if you're a digital painter of any variety, you will be enormously impressed with the vast range of tools available. It's a really fantastic program with loads to offer, and very well worth the price. I'd have been happy paying 4x what I did and still be overjoyed with how the program measures up. It's an absolute bargain.Very highly recommended to any 2D artist, digital painter, and of course especially anime/manga/cartoon artists who will likely find great joy in the specialist brushes dedicated to smooth line work, and colour blending tools. Would recommend to professionals and new artists alike. I can't give an enthusiastic enough review!