Are there any art programs designed specifically for mouse users?
7h 23m ago by lemmy.world/u/early_riser in nostupidquestions
I'm guessing a lot of people are going to say Illustrator or Inkscape. Are there any raster art programs?
Most are mouse first programs. Developers know that a majority do not own a pen tablet or something similar. There's a reason why brushes in programs have smoothing, so that you can get nice curves even with a mouse.
Moreover, I would call GIMP's experience with pen tablet relatively worse than using a mouse.
The reason why pen tablets are better in most cases is that you can use real drawing skills within those programs, like pressure and tilt, which cannot be achieved by a mouse.
I think they're asking for which ones have the best/most of those 'smoothing' and similar features. Not if they exist.
I would chime in with a recommend but I'm not intimately familiar with any art app except Blender, and even there it's mostly modeling and not 'art'.
Your restriction to raster only apps makes little sense to me, outside of art style choices (which is totally valid).
Most of the features I can think of that would make using a mouse easier I would think would be more likely to be present in vector art programs? Or something with excellent bezier curve controls and tilt/pressure emulation controls in similar fashion, anyways.
You may have to give a bit more info on what you're looking for to get really good suggestions. For starters, do you only really want to draw with the mouse like it's a stylus but not end up with nasty lines? Or do you just want tools you can adjust and won't have to be precise with and fiddle with to infinity to get the shapes you want?
Many programs have multiple different supported workflows to make certain construction styles easier, too, so which app is best might directly come down to what you want to do and how you want to do it more than mouse vs stylus or raster vs vector, etc.
Or do you just want tools you can adjust and won’t have to be precise with and fiddle with to infinity to get the shapes you want?
That's kind of what I'm thinking of.
In that case, I'd definitely not disregard vector based apps. Worst case, you 'should' be able to do the heavy lifting in what ever app is best for that control scheme, and maybe do some extra work in a rasterized tool if your style truly requires non-vectorized details.
If you want a lot of your detail to be from traditional methods, it might be easiest to stay in a rasterized app, but if you want the line work or sketching/etc tools to be nice computational tools you can change at will regardless, it might take exploring a few options in order to expose the 'best' tool.
I found Krita easy to use with a mouse, they might still have a free trial going on - that's what hooked me.
I know you said raster, but what about working in vector and converting to raster? I found Affinity programs pretty streamlined and affordable for moving back and forth between styles.
Krita is always free and open source, supported by donations and the community. It's not a trial and it's not time-limited.
Thanks for the correction. It looks like buying through a platform/app store supports the developers. At that time (years ago) I got into it through a trial. I didn't know it was free, but glad I supported them.
Mouse users? As opposed to what? Stylus users? Touch?
Any software that can be used with a mouse can be used with stylus or touch. Any raster art program made for a personal computer will have mouse support.
It’s not clear what you’re even asking.
I think they're asking for a traditional raster art program that still comes with nice features for mouse drawing, like curve smoothing and ... uh... other things.
Autodesk sketchbook works pretty well when using a mouse.