Recently PopCultureShock was given the chance to look at ArtRage, a very inexpensive piece of software intended “… for hobbyists and professionals.” ArtRage, the press release continues, “…allows anyone to paint and draw realistically and with almost endless creative possibilities.”

The ArtRage website boasts that it “lets you get painting from the moment you open it up,” which is true. The paint effects and scraper options make it fun to blend paint. The glitter tool is fun to play with. The paint itself has a nice 3-D look and smushes in a satisfying way.

I can see where kids and adults unfamiliar with other digital painting software might find ArtRage very useful. There are a lot of fun stencils, and ArtRage allows you to paint over photographs or other images to make them look like portraits. It’s probably a lot of fun if you’re really into enhancing digital Christmas cards for your family.

However, for the accomplished digital artist ArtRage is lacking. Although it is Photoshop compatible insomuch as one can import and export files and work with layers, the similarities end there.

I had Alison Wilgus, a freelance artist who is a Photoshop expert and a professional user of Corel Painter try out ArtRage. She had this to say:

“Photoshop is the industry standard for digital graphics, and one of the reasons Painter has been so successful is that its interface and internal logic are very similar to Photoshop’s. Long-time Photoshop users can easily grasp the basics of how Painter works… ArtRage is a sorry substitute for Painter partly because it fails in this regard — its interface is clumsy and unfamiliar. Even the most basic effects are a struggle, such that it would be far easier for the user to continue working in Photoshop — or to turn to another alternative program, such as Open Canvas.”

Like Alison, I am a long time user of Photoshop, so I had a hard time understanding the tools in ArtRage. ArtRage’s tool palette obstructs too much of the canvas and is too cute to be practical. One can hide the palettes with a click or a keystroke, but I wouldn’t have to hide them if they were smaller. When you hover over a tool in Photoshop with your mouse, Photoshop will tell you the name of the tool and the keyboard shortcut for using that tool. ArtRage has no such hovering help.

Part of my problem with ArtRage is the leap from reality to the digital world. For example, I have used Photoshop for about ten years, but I have never edited photographs in a dark room. Photoshop has tool icons intended to help oldschool photographers, like the sponge tool or the “dodge” tool. As someone who came of age in the digital era, I have no idea what it is like to “sponge” a photograph in real life. However, I know exactly what effect the sponge tool has in Photoshop, and that’s all that matters to me.

ArtRage seems so firmly grounded in reality that I couldn’t figure it out. I have far less experience with oil paint than with digital paint. I did an oil painting once… in high school… eleven years ago. I have no idea what to do with a palette knife unless I watch Bob Ross videos on youtube. There is at least one tool in ArtRage I couldn’t figure out at all. The mystery tool had no effect on my paintings whatsoever. Maybe if I had used it or seen one in real life I would know what it was.

The paint thinning and “Insta Dry,” “Auto Clean” effects and tool settings were totally lost on me, since I don’t really deal with brushes in real life. Turning Auto Clean off brings up a glass of water. How novel! I thought I’d never have to clean a brush again, but it’s good to know I have that option.

Where Photoshop is a precision instrument for drawing fine lines and editing individual pixels, ArtRage is the equivalent of throwing a bucket of paint at a wall. I couldn’t draw a clean line. Although there was a stencil for word balloons, I couldn’t draw a really precise line around that balloon like I would in Photoshop. I also couldn’t add text. Here’s the image I came up with:

ArtRage’s tracing mode allows you to paint over photographs, but I could do the same thing much more quickly by applying a single Photoshop filter. Almost everything in ArtRage can be done in Photoshop faster and with more precision. But then again, I use Photoshop professionally. ArtRage is clearly aimed at the non-professional market.

When I use ArtRage on my wacom, there is a severe lagging problem between my stylus and the screen. The lag is not nearly as bad using my mouse, but it is still present.

A lot of learning Photoshop is learning how to make precise selections with the lasso tool. ArtRage avoids this problem by having no selection tools at all (none that I could find, anyway). This will make ArtRage appealing to users who have been alienated by Photoshop, but it alienates Photoshop addicts. I felt totally lost without a lasso.

My cohort Daryl Wise enjoyed ArtRage, saying “I can’t draw so the stencils make me feel like I can!” In the end, that might be the key to ArtRage’s success. At around $40 (or just $25 for a download-only version), anyone can learn ArtRage and start using it creatively, from a kindergarten class to a digitally inclined grandmother.