Features:

  • Includes everything professional comic artists and aspiring artists need to create manga comic art
  • Easy to use, intuitive interface produces fast results and single-click special effects save time
  • Complete control over text, lines, word balloons, and page layout
  • Tons of screen tones included add dimension, depth, and character to your art
  • Built in special effects, tones and tools give artwork a unique style and professional look
A must have for any comic artist!

I really don't know just how much more i can recommend this software to artists. It is by far THE BEST art program i have EVER used. This was built for one thing, art. More specifically, comics. I'm a comic artist, and this program is so enjoyable to use and has sped up my process ten fold. I've used Photoshop and Paint Tool Sai, and in my opinion, Manga Studio blows them out of the water when it comes to drawing art and comics. Period.

got it for a super awesome price

So excited, got it for a super awesome price. normally over 200 bucks i got my copy for around 80! if you wanna draw professional anime,manga, or anything else comic wise this is the best thing around. has much better tools and options than the cheaper versions. Always go EX especially if you wanna have full coloring style options.

Fantastic software, fantastic value.

As a longtime Photoshop user, it took me awhile to get used to Manga/Clip Studio's interface, but once I did it was clear that MS/CS is the best software available for comic and sequential artists in terms of tools for inking and sketching. For painting and color work, I'd say it's extremely competitive as well, but PS still has its uses. Overall, this is a must-have piece of software for comic artists.

Accelerator for the novice and steroids for the professional

A long time ago I gave up drawing because I felt it was not practical to make a living from it. Drawing was hard and I did not have anyone to teach and train me to draw the images that I wanted to draw. Years later I learned that drawing is a skill and not a talent that someone is born with and merely needs to unlock with practice. The bottom line is that you need to work at your skill. Here I am at 50 and I now have much more patience to learn and the focus to try to hone a skill. The problem with the traditional way of pencils and erasers and inking and coloring is that pen and paper do not allow for mistakes and I make a ton of mistakes. Sometimes I corrected drawings only to find that my original markings were better and needed to be groomed but it was too late and the image changed and I grew frustrated. Along comes Manga Studio which has many features that allow me to draw, shape, craft, etc. with layers and such that make the images I draw better. If I make a mistake or wish to correct the image I can place layers and see for myself if it enhances what I'm doing or if it was a mistake that I don't want. The studio has multiple coloring options, shaping options, and such that I have a tool for just about everything. My skill has been ACCELERATED as a result. That is the power in this software. For the professional it has it all for them as well. Is Manga Studios unique? No, there are other software programs out there that can do the same thing. Photoshop is probably the most popular. Manga Studios is its equal if not superior to anything out there--including Photoshop. The only thing that I can see that Photoshop has an edge is in some of the tools for photos. Where no other software can touch Manga Studios is comic creation. If you are someone who is an artist or you want to make a storyboard for a movie or you want to create a graphic novel--Manga Studios is the best hands down. The other significant thing about Manga Studios is the low price. It is affordable and versatile and in that respect is the best software out there in my opinion. If you think you can sit down and master all the tools provided you will find that the software is simple for jumping in and drawing but it has hours of features to explore. I am a novice at best but I can see how quickly I've improved and I can see on the horizon that drawing a comic or a professionally crafted painting is on the horizon. I'd like to thank the creators of the software for making Manga Studios. Empowering people to help them create something is powerful and good. Thank you for helping me build my skills.

If you poor, but need a super awesome art program so you don't feel bad about pirated ones...Buy this. Right MEOW.

Honestly the best alternative to Photoshop on the market for the price.. If you are a photoshop user, it takes a little getting used to, but it's so much worth it.. it has all the things a comic artist or hopefull cartoonist would want.. plus all the painting and everything that is simply awesome.. though i'm cheating on photoshop with Manga Studio EX5, they get along splendidly and now share. Get it. You won't be sorry.

Very robust program, not only for manga

Very robust software, more straightforward and way less expensive than photoshop for illlustration, sketching and digital painting. Very deep brush engine, actions & hotkey customization. Everything for making your own graphic novel or comic is here. From roughs/layouts, penciling, inking, flatting, coloring, effects, speech balloons, even formatting the whole story in different sizes and exporting to kindle, epub, pdf, or just making painting and export them as tiff, png, jpeg and psd formats. They recently added animation, so you can make gifs too. You can even use as a default texturing & compositing program for 3d models. I bought it on sale for a third of the regular price. There are amazing brush packs on internet you can add. Many people ignore this program because of the name, assuming is just for anime style drawings with big eyes and cartoony bright colors, but it can even be a very decent photo editor with lots of filters, layer blending modes and effects Get the Ex version, way more features than the other ones

As a user of Manga Studio EX 4, I ...

As a user of Manga Studio EX 4, I am throughly impressed by this software suite. Many changes have certainly upped the learning curve, however that progress is well worth the extra time a cartoonist has to spend learning the new UI and how to do things. Manga Studio EX is a first class tool for anyone involved in comic creation or other similar sequential art. Now with advanced color features that rival Corel Painter and Photoshop without the stability issues (Corel) or constant bleeding of money through subscriptions (Adobe, and yes Autodesk now).

Better than Photoshop

I highly recommend this, not just as an alternative for Photoshop, but as a primary art program. Its features and editing capabilities alone make it better, for illustration, drawing, painting, and sketching, than Photoshop, Paint Tool SAI, Corel Painter, and others. The in-program tools and pressure settings (for tablets) make it highly user friendly and easy to learn to use. My favorite feature is the perspective ruler, which snaps your tool to the angles of that ruler for accurate perspective drawing of background and objects. I could go on for hours how useful all the tools in this are, but you should check them out for yourself.

Upgraded from EX4 and VERY happy about the new features!

I just got Manga Studio EX 5 in the mail a couple of days ago. I previously owned Manga Studio EX 3 and EX 4 and decided it was time for a much needed upgrade of my software after having used EX 4 for at least 5 years now. I am a professional freelance cartoonist, illustrator, and character designer, so having tools that help me expedite my process is a necessity. Installation was quick and easy for me, and I am running on a Windows 10 pro 64 bit OS. I had read other reviews mentioning that I may have to reinstall my tablet driver after the software installation, but my Wacom Intuos 4L still worked without issues so there was no need for that. I am currently in the process of a tablet upgrade (a UGEE 2150 monitor tablet) so I will have to see how it works with the new one. Right off the bat I could tell there were some major upgrades with this software compared to EX4! I am always using the vector inking option that the EX line is known for, and then moving over to Adobe Photoshop CS5 for color work. So I naturally tested the vector inking pen tool right away. Happy to say that the inks are rendered way smoother now than before, and I can now color and sketch in vectors too using the pencil and brush tools! The line adjust tools are a little different but in my opinion a huge leap forward compared to the previous incarnation, with options like line weight pressure modifications and a huge list of others. Blending is also much better than it was before which means that I might actually be able to work on art start to finish in this one program instead of having to constantly switch back and forth to Photoshop. Saving me a lot of time in the long run. I was even able to do some quick photo-editing combining character arts I made with one of the software's stock backgrounds (I will include the two versions of the test image I made in this review to show the clarity of its image processing). Saving is a little faster in this version than the last version, though for some reason the screen it is on goes black for a moment right before it is done saving. It doesn't harm anything, but including it in this review in case this happens to anyone who reads this, don't let that scare you. I usually work in 600 dpi resolution in Manga Studio day to day, then shrink it down when needed. I did just get this so I have only done minor tests with the key features I use. I do make comics on occasion, so if I get a chance I will be updating this review on the new comic creation tools. I did also read that features like custom speed/action line generator has been removed so going to keep EX4 on my system as well for now. Lastly, I should note that buying this here at Amazon was cheaper than the upgrade option at the official Smith Micro store! $130 (the current sale price as of this review) is an amazing deal for this software. Very happy so far with this and will be recommending this to my other artist friends! Artworks included in this review © Ratgirl Productions and Eternal Dragon. Example only, not available for redistribution or reuse without permission.

Excellent Product

As a computer graphics professional, I am accustomed to using various high end graphics programs. As with all quality art software packages there is a bit of a learning curve involved in Manga Studio EX5, however, this program, while not being an "all-in-one" kind of graphics software, does an excellent job of enabling the user to easily make compelling art pieces and illustrations ranging from simple black and white to high color and utilizing both vector and bitmap formats. The built-in page setup utility is also full-featured and allows for completely customizable settings for size and resolution. Great Price, too!

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