Artists create colorful art in different mixtures, shades, and hues using just their brush and color palette. Some of them have transitioned from painting on paper and cardboard to using paint apps that make their art pieces pop better.
These paint apps offer advanced features like 3D creation, graphic illustration, vector drawing, image manipulation and so much more. Most of which cannot be achieved manually.
If you are obsessed with digital painting but find it difficult to pick the best paint app for your Mac device, we’ve got you covered. We carefully picked out the five most amazing paint apps to bring your imagination to life.
Best Paint App for Mac
1. Autodesk Sketchbook
Autodesk sketchbook is a great painting app for Mac with a simple and interactive user interface. Art beginners and professionals can navigate Autodesk with ease, therefore making it stand out as one of the best paint apps for Mac.
The painting app has varieties of natural toolsets to choose from with up to 140+ brushes, beautiful color palettes, and pens. Autodesk gives you full control over your brush stroke sizes through an adjustable circle that’s found on the workspace.
Autodesk sketchbook is highly customizable and has a large workspace you can play on. With the app, artists can create realistic drawings and paintings.
There is a free version of Autodesk sketchbook on the Mac App store but it comes with limited features. If you truly want to enjoy all the qualities of this app, we suggest you subscribe to the Paid version which costs $4.99 monthly or $29.99 yearly.
Main Qualities
- Large workspace.
- Customizable
- Vast brushes collection
- Simple interface
2. Paint pro
Some creative designers prefer using Paint pro since they have accessible usage features. In addition to that, they have a wide range of available brushes and vectors.
However, to adequately use the app, you must subscribe to the pro version by buying add-ons through the app. This will give you access to some brushes, Retina Display Support, text edits, photos, and vectors.
With Paint pro, you have unlimited undo/redo options. You also have various export choices such as PDF, PNG, and JPG. It is one of the best paint apps for Mac because it syncs with all your Apple devices. You can access your paintings on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The premium version goes for $14.99
Key features
- Save brushes to dock
- Pin & Export thumbnails
- 50 million to one zoom range
3. Patina
Patina provides an easy and slick arrangement of tool options that makes painting, drawing, and sketching a breeze. Though not as advanced as other painting apps, it offers a reasonable collection of brush types and color palettes. You can also carry out basic image editing features like cropping, resizing, and rotating on this app.
Patina goes for a fair price of $2.99, and it is excellent for beginners who intend to develop their digital art skills. You will need a Mac OS x 10.8 or later to be able to run this application successfully.
Main qualities
- Simple interface
- Good brushes collection
- Supports different file types
4. Krita
Do you intend to develop the prowess of being a pro digital sketcher? If yes, the Krita is the best paint tool for you. It is a free application created by developers to help those that cannot afford high-priced paint apps.
With Krita, your creative ideas are unlimited. It encompasses various tools such as beautiful brushes, customizable brush engines, brush stabilizers, and built-in vector tools that help you create comic panels.
In addition, it has a wrap-around mode that can reference a particular image along with the X & Y axis. One perk of Krita is that you can share your preferred tools with the world in-app by creating your bundles.
Key qualities
- Free and open-source
- Illustrations and comics
- Texture and matte painters
5. Paintbrush
Paintbrush is a proprietary paint app for Mac that provides a platform for users to make simple paintings. If you want to complete a quick image editing task like cropping, resizing, and rotating, Paintbrush is the go-to app.
Someone with little or no experience in digital painting can use the app because it is less technical than tools like Adobe Photoshop. It supports picture formats like JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, and PNG.
This is one of the best paint apps for Mac, especially for beginners. Since it is a default app, it can be used for free. However, you will need to have your mac running on Mac Os 10.10 or later for premium functionality.
Key features
- Default macOS paint app
- Intuitive user interface
- Great for beginners
Wrap up
Whether you are looking to perform a simple painting task or take on a complex drawing project on Mac, the apps we listed are the five best paint apps you can rely on. What makes them even better is that they are affordable and easy to navigate.
