Getting your art out there has never been easier than it is today. Just a few decades ago, people needed sophisticated tools and other expensive methods to show others their creative talent. Digital platforms have revolutionized this landscape and a lot of artists are getting recognized every day. However, if you’re looking for drawing apps for Mac, you can find a ton of options and it can be a little overwhelming.
- Comic Bookie is incredibly comfortable comic book reader software. This tool enables you to see comics effortlessly and speedily and that too with very modest troubles. You only need to open your file in Comic Bookie tool, and then you can simply start reading.
- Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac) Brand: FREEVERSE. Platform: Mac OS X. 3.1 out of 5 stars. Multiple Page and Panel layouts, including styles for a real comic-strip look. Streamlined image selection, cropping and placement applications. Authentic speech balloons enhanced by a built-in professional quality.
Check Out Toon Boom. Price: $60/mo or $999 one-time fee. Platforms: Mac, Windows. Looking at the complete opposite of free we’ll find Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. To my knowledge this is the most expensive storyboarding software on the market and it’s also the industry standard. Try Comic Life: 30 day free trial! Download or buy Comic Life 3, the app with everything you need to make a stunning comic from your own images. Try it for 30 days, on us, and then buy it from our plasq store and register the trial or grab it from the Mac App Store. Fast and simple! And don’t forget our amazing educational pricing!
In this article, we are going to streamline that list so that you can choose the best drawing app for you. Let’s jump into it.
Contents
- 1 10 Best Drawing Apps for Mac
- 2 19 Free Drawing Software For Macbook 2021
10 Best Drawing Apps for Mac
We have compiled a list of 8 best drawing apps for Mac that you can get today. The list is ranked based on which app we think is the best, but you can choose whichever app suits your art style.
1. Adobe Photoshop
What can I say about Adobe Photoshop that hasn’t been said already? Photoshop has been around for a long time and it gets new updates every year. It’s one of the most sophisticated drawing apps for Mac and will be a lot of help for a creator. You can create your own image and also edit other images to your liking. This software has a lot of love and support all over the world and it’s easy to understand why. There are a lot of videos online that’s going to help you learn Photoshop and there’s a large online community who’d be happy to help you. The newest version, Photoshop 2020, has an AI called Adobe Sensei that will help you get better selections.
Photoshop is great, but it is expensive. You will have to pay a subscription fee of $20.99/month if billed annually and you can do so here. So if you’re new to the creator scene, then I’d recommend checking out other entries.
2. Autodesk Sketchbook
If you want a professional drawing app with a lot of bells and whistles and if you want it for free, then Autodesk Sketchbook is for you. This app is so versatile and feature-rich that it will appeal to a lot of people. It has a minimalistic design and is preferred by a lot of content creators. There are over 140 brushes and you can even import brushes created by other artists. You can also get custom perspective guides among other things.
You can check out more features and download the app by clicking on this link.
3. Corel Painter
Corel Painter is an app that’s designed by creators for creators. It has a wide variety of tools you can use to propel your art to the next level. With over 900 brushes, this app is loved by many artists. Corel Painter also supports GPU acceleration so that you can get your work done much faster. Their website has hundreds of videos that will help you perform better.
Corel Painter costs $339.99 and there’s no subscription. You can download the app here.
4. Rebelle 3
If you are into realistic painting, then you will find Rebelle 3 appealing. It’s a unique app that uses realistic watercolor, acrylic paint simulations. The resulting image will look like it was made on paper with real colors and if this suits your art style, then you should definitely go for it. It makes the colors seem extremely realistic and you can even get simulated watercolor drops. This app was supposed to be an experimental software designed by Peter Blaškovič and it is popular among watercolor painters and CG artists.
You can check out Rebelle 3 and its features on its website. You can get Rebelle 3 for $89.99.
5. FireAlpaca
If you are new to digital drawing or if you have older Macs, then FireAlpaca should be a nice fit for you. It doesn’t have as many features as the earlier entries on the list, but that’s why it’s recommended to beginners. You won’t find the options overwhelming and you can worry about getting a more powerful Mac later on. It’s a small app that’s simple, easy and free to use.
You can check out the feature list of FireAlpaca on their website.
6. Preview
Preview comes pre-installed on a Mac and it can do much more than sign PDFs. If you want a simple drawing app for random doodles, the Preview should be good enough. You can open up any image on Preview and click on the Markup icon (pictured above) to access a lot more menus. It can help you doodle, make notes and even select shapes with the lasso tool. Since this is an in-built app, you don’t have to download anything.
7. Clip Studio Paint
If your dream is to become the best mangaka on Za Warudo!(means “the world” for all of my readers who are not JoJo fans), then you deserve a great manga illustrator. Clip Studio Paint is highly recommended if you draw a lot of manga panels. You can decide panel layouts and customize the tools for your art style pretty quickly. This drawing app for Mac also works great if you want to draw comics.
Clip Studio Paint is available for the free trial and you can get the standard version for $49.99. You can get the full-featured version for $219.99.
8. MediBang Paint
MediBang Paint, just like Clip Studio Paint is aimed at anime and comic-book artists. It has over 50 brushes and a large number of backgrounds that you can choose from. They have tons of tutorials for you on their website and you can snap grids and arrange the panels easily. This app is also available on iPhones and iPads. Medibang Paint is available for free and you can download it here.
Best Comic Book Software
9. Inkscape
Inkscape is an app that will appeal to a wide variety of creative people. It can help you create anything from sketches to website designs. It’s a versatile app that’s open-source and free to use. Inkscape also has a very helpful community that will help you use the app.
You can download Inkscape for free by clicking on this link.
10. Patina
Patina is another simple app that lets you create sketches to your heart’s content and simply moves everything else out of the way. It has a simple layout and it’s extremely simple to use. you can use it to make a lot of sketches and doodles on other images too. Patina has a lot of essential features but misses out on stuff like multiple layers. This app is, however, perfect for beginner artists.
Patina is a free app available on the App Store and you can download here.
19 Free Drawing Software For Macbook 2021
Here is the total list of top Drawing tools and Apps for your Macbook.
- Adobe Photoshop
- Autodesk Sketchbook
- Corel Painter
- Rebelle 3
- FireAlpaca
- Preview
- Clip Studio Paint
- MediBang Paint
- Inkscape
- Patina
- Adobe Illustrator
- Leonardo
- Affinity Designer
- Krita
- Tayasui Sketches
- Paintbrush
- Tayasui Sketches
- Sketch
- Sip
Final Take
These are some of the best drawing apps for Mac. I hope that this article was helpful to you. If you have any doubts or if we missed your favorite app, then please let us know in the comments section down below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
New version: 9.8.0!!
May 16, 21
I am glad to announce a new release, check the new features:
YACReader
- Adds support for full manga mode, it means that controls get inverted to match the navigation.
- Fix UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT shortcuts for moving a zoomed in page around.
YACReaderLibrary
- New fuzzy search engine. Type to search into any field of the database, or target specific content. Check how it works below.
- New `manga` field added to comics and folders to tag content as manga, any content added to a manga folder will become manga automatically.
- Support for HTML in comic synopsis, this fixes the synopsis when it comes from Comic Vine with HTML tags.
- Improve keyboard navigation in Comic Vine dialog. Enter will trigger next or search and Backspace will go back to the previous section.
Best Free Comic Book Software For Mac
Server
- New `manga` field is sent to YACReader for iOS, so comics tagged as manga will be recognized as such when reading remotely or importing comics. A new iOS build is needed though, it will be ready once 9.8.0 is released.
New search engine
The new search engine is much powerful than before. It can search into the following data base fields:
comics
numbers -> 'numpages', 'number', 'count', 'arcnumber', 'arccount'
text -> 'title', 'volume', 'storyarc', 'genere', 'writer', 'penciller', 'inker', 'colorist', 'letterer', 'coverartist', 'publisher', 'format', 'agerating', 'synopsis', 'characters', 'notes'
boolean (true/false) -> 'isbis', 'color', 'read', 'manga'
text -> 'filename'
folders
text -> 'folder'
boolean -> 'completed', 'finished'
If you start typing, YACReaderLibrary will search all the fields for any match. If you want to specify some fields you can do it writing the field name followed by ':' and the value.
By default words separated by a space are joined by an 'and', e.g. this that -> this and that.
Some examples:
blah -> any comic or folder with any field containing blah, even partially, will be shown.
read:true blah -> same as above but only for read comics.
read:true manga:true -> comics that are read and are manga.
not read:true -> same as read:false.
'blah blah' -> looks for the full string in any field.
writer:'john doe' or writer:'jane doe' -> all the comics write by john doe or jane doe.
(read:true manga:true) or (filename:cbz writer:'john doe') -> you can use more complex search expressions using () to group expressions.
I hope you enjoy the new update. Please, if you like YACReader consider to become a patron in Patreon or donate some money using Pay-Pal and help keeping the project alive. Remember that there is an iOS version available in the Apple App Store and it has been updated to support the new features coming from the server.
I want to thank all the contributions to the project, there has been some nice activity on Github and all the new stuff wouldn't be possible without the people that have decided to get involved in the project. THANKS!!
9.7.0 is out!
September 03, 20
New features are:
- Image enlargement/stretching can now be disabled for fit to width and height
- New option to show covers as single pages in double page mode (enabled by default)
- fix object leaks in database code
- add bidirectional sync support between the iOS app and the server (YACReader for iOS 3.10.0 or higher needed, it will be released next)
- add support for port setting from the command line
- other minor fixes and improved stability and performance.
Any feedback is always welcome.
If you enjoy using YACReader I want to ask you to consider becoming a patron and donate some money to keep the project alive, you can find the YACReader's Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/yacreader
Patreon page launched
August 28, 20
Hi all,
As you know YACReader, YACReaderLibrary and YACReaderLibraryServer are free and open source, so they don't generate any income at all. I keep the web site and users' forum free of any kind of ads. The project has been alive for more than 10 years, it has hundreds of thousands downloads and a huge amount of users all over the world.
If you enjoy using these apps I want to ask you to consider becoming a patron and donate some money to keep the project alive, you can find the YACReader's Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/yacreader
Thanks!
YACReader 9.6.0 is out!
September 27, 19
It was long overdue, but this new version is finally here. Check what's new:
- RAR5 support.
- Fix some issues in magnifying glass when used in hdpi screens.
- New setting to close YACReaderLibrary to the system tray. Yay! This is specially relevant for those who use YACReaderLibrary for streaming comics to the iOS app.
- Fastest and more reliable sync back from iOS.
- Option to hide current/next comic banner in the grid view.
- Fix saving progress when reading in double page mode.
- Fixes in Comic Vine integration.
- Other fixes and stability improvements.
I know it doesn't look like much, but a lot of work has been done to keep the project in good shape, it is not visible for the final user yet, but it will pay off in the long term.
I would like to thank you all for using YACReader, for becoming part of the community and for all your help testing pre-release, and providing feedback. Thanks to all the contributors making YACReader better and better, I can't thank you enough for all those PRs. Felix, thanks for helping with the forum and thank you for all that 'non visible' work that keeps the project in good shape.
Mutiple selection in YACReader for iOS
September 06, 19
Comic Book Software Free Mac Version
Multiple items selection has been a feature since the first version, do you know how to use it?, take a look at this video: