home/gearlist/sai last edit February 14, 2026

PaintTool SAI version 2

PaintToolSAI (version 2, technically in beta) is my favorite painter program for digital art right now. its so fast and light and responsive ... and the UI is like . i could go on about the UI .

like you know how in a lot of editors when you open it theres a "background" and if you forget to make a new layer you wind up "drawing on the background" and your lines are stuck to the white and everything's messed up ? in SAI the first layer is just transparent and the background is assumed to be white if there's no color on top of it. so you can just open it and start drawing ! because thats obviously what you would want, because you're here to paint. its a tool. for painting. idk, its a small example but the overall philosophy of "lean yet powerful #tools that are verywell suited to a clear and particular purpose" shines bright through all of it; and that, dear reader, is my shit .

i like the brush engines a lot, especially the pixel art stuff cause thats just what i use often, and i cant overstress how responsive it feels .. its instant in a way that allows for higher frequency eye->brain->hand feedback loops. the whole thing just runs good and feels good and is fun and gratifying to interact with

oh also, theres a whole vector thing ! and the controls are cwazy interesting . dual weilding a pen and keyboard and doing vector lineart in this mode is like, mind-bending. also the way it draws pixel engine brushstrokes on top of the vectors is just. mwah. mwah !!