ArtRage delivers natural looking digital paintings. Leaving bristle marks and paint blobs and knife strokes gives paintings a look and feel that's hard to achieve with other software. Blending paints and mixing tools and playing with the settings offers both versatility and a lot of fun. It's my go-to program for digital painting, be it oil, watercolor or marker style. Sure, it's not exactly like natural paints and materials, especially with watercolors, but it's similar enough, yet digitally unique that it has its own specific character. Which I consider a good thing.

It is perfect for creating natural looking fine artwork. I love the canvas textures and how they interact with the realistic effect of the oil brush and pencil. The wet media is capable of blending like real paint and the faux 3D texture of the brush strokes is accentuated by lighting within the software. The interface is clean, simple and very refreshing for a Adobe suite veteran used to complex interfaces. It is a surprisingly versatile software when you start utilising the sliders and presents on the tools, allowing you to achieve whichever style of painting you want - be it Pop Art or Impressionist.

It's very easy for a beginner to get into the swing of the software and a beginner could very fast become professional.