Clip Studio Paint vs Photoshop for drawing

This guide is written for those deciding between using Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint to begin your digital art journey.

I'm a graphic designer who has been using Photoshop since 2002, and I use Clip Studio Paint occasionally for my digital sketches.

Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint are apps packed with many features and each app has its pros and cons. You can probably get a hint from just the product name to make a guess as to which app is good at which areas.

Photoshop was made for editing videos and can be used for graphic design work, and many digital artists actually use Photoshop for digital painting.

Clip Studio Paint has many tools and features made for artists and animators. It can also be used for graphic design work but this is not the first app people think of when graphic design is involved.

While it is possible to do the same job with either apps, your productivity will depend on the tool set and features available.

Supported platforms and OS

Photoshop is supported on MacOS and Windows, and even on the iPad.

The tablet version of Photoshop on the iPad does not include the full feature set of the desktop version. The user interface is designed for Apple Pencil and finger use. You can open the same Photoshop file created on a computer using the tablet version, but you may not be able to perform certain tasks due to the missing features.

Clip Studio Paint is available on MacOS, Windows, iPad and Android tablets. The app has the same feature set on all platforms. In July 2023, CSP has released a Simple Mode with user interface designed for tablets, but Simple Mode lacks the full features of Studio (desktop) mode. You can switch between Simple Mode and Studio Mode easily. All keyboard shortcuts are supported on computer and tablet.

There are two versions of CSP, CSP Pro and CSP EX. CSP Pro has tools for character art, concept art and illustration. CSP EX has all the PRO tools and features for manga, comics, webtoon and animation. Since CSP Pro has most of the features required for creating digital art, that's the version I will refer to in this guide. CSP EX is four times more expensive than CSP PRO. Just remember that PRO is good and EX is EXTRA features.

Price

Pricing is an important consideration.

Photoshop is available through three subscription-based plans from Adobe, and the prices at the time of writing are:

• Photoshop Plan with 100GB cloud storage, includes Adobe Fresco: US 20.99/month
• Photography Plan with Adobe Lightroom and 1TB cloud storage: US 19.99/month
• Adobe Creative Suite with 20+ apps and 100GB cloud storage: US 54.99/month

Through these plans, you will also get the tablet version of Photoshop on the iPad.

The Adobe license is tied to your username. You can use Photoshop on any computer or iPad, and signing in will sign out the previous session (from the previous computer).

Clip Studio Paint is available through subscription-based plans and as one time purchase. The main advantage of subscription-based plan is you'll always get the latest updates and features, but the downside if you have to pay monthly. The one-time-purchase license only includes security updates and not feature updates.

The one-time purchase of CSP PRO is USD 49.99 at the time of review. This will give you access to CSP v2.0.x and this only runs on MacOS and Windows, not on tablets.

The subscription prices are as follows:

• Single-device: USD 4.99/month or USD 24.99/year
• Two devices: USD 7.49/month or USD 33.99/year
• Four devices: USD 8.99/month or USD 53.99
• Smartphone plan: USD 0.99/month or USD 6.49

There are actually many more purchase and licensing options from CSP but those above are the most popular.

If you're using MacOS or Windows, you can go with the one-time purchase because that includes most tools needed for creating digital art. I've been using CSP v1.x for years and have never felt like I needed new features, and now we have CSP v2 that's available as a one-time purchase.

Important note for CSP users: CSP license is tied to the hardware. If you use two devices, you have to get dual-device license. If you upgrade your device in the future, you have to de-activate the license to transfer the license to the new device. It is possible to install CSP on multiple computers, but you can only sign in to those that have the license tied to the hardware.

File format

Photoshop uses the PSD file format and it's an industry-standard format that can be opened by many other software. However, if you use another software to open a PSD file, some of the features/data may be lost. E.g. text layout may not display properly.

Clip Studio paint uses the CLIP file format and is not as popular compared to PSD file format, but CLIP files can still be opened by some other apps, including Photoshop and Photopea. Opening CLIP files with other software may also result in lost of some features/data.

If you switch to a different drawing app in the future, just know that you can still open these PSD or CLIP files.

User interface and user experience

Both apps have very customisable workspaces.

This is the Photoshop user interface with tool bar on the left and palettes on the right. The selection, position and size of the palettes are customisable.

This is the CSP user interface and is as customisable as Photoshop's UI.

You can create and save different workspaces for different types of art, e.g. graphic design vs illustration, and re-use the workspaces.

There's no perfect UI. In most cases, the more you use the app, the more familiar you will be with the UI, tools and palettes. And because the UI is customisable, it is entirely possible for you to configure the Photoshop UI to look like CSP and vice versa.

Keyboard shortcuts

Both desktop versions of Photoshop and CSP have good support for keyboard shortcuts and shortcut customisation.

For the tablet versions, only CSP offers the same full set of keyboard shortcuts and customisation. Photoshop tablet version only offers a much smaller subset of keyboard shortcuts. It takes one second to scroll through the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop tablet version while it takes several seconds to scroll through the keyboard shortcuts for the Photoshop desktop version.

Tools and brushes

The default brushes from Photoshop don't look appealing to me. I personally prefer brushes with textured edges and those are lacking with Photoshop. Thankfully, there countless free and better Photoshop brushes available from the Adobe website.

I prefer the brushes from CSP because the strokes you get look closer to traditional media. If you need even more brushes, you can download them from the CSP asset library. I am a big fan of the brush set from CSP v1.10 which was removed from newer versions of CSP. Bit Husky is my favourite brush for drawing in CSP.

Recovery of artworks after a crash

Both apps offer recovery of artwork after a crash.

You can read more about CSP data recovery and Photoshop data recovery from the help pages.

Both apps let you set the time for auto-save so that you don't lose too much time and work should the app ever crash.

File management

Both apps let you save files on your local storage as well as on the cloud.

Photoshop users can get 100GB or 1TB of online storage depending on which subscription plan they have. There is also option of more storage but you'll have to contact Adobe for the prices.

CSP users only get 10GB of storage. CSP EX users get 100GB. There doesn't seem to be any option to increase cloud storage capacity.

I personally recommend saving your files on your computer, and rely on cloud storage services to backup your art. You can use Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, DropBox. And to backup your backup, you can get external storage drives which are now so affordable. Cloud storage is more convenient as it allow you access to your files from all computers, tablets and phones at any time.

Conclusion

If you're looking for an app mostly for drawing, I would recommend CSP because it's designed more for drawing with the brushes and toolset. And CSP is much cheaper at USD 24.99/year vs Photoshop which is either USD 19.99 or 20.99/month. You just get more value for money with CSP.

If you're looking to draw and also do graphic design work, Photoshop toolset is more intuitive, but maybe I'm biased because I've used Photoshop for almost 2 decades.