Paint Tool SAI

The computer program Paint Tool Sai is a very well renowned program amongst various artists and most artists just starting out on Deviant art.com. It’s essentially an image manipulative program with a cost of approximately sixty US dollars, depending on the currency rate compared to the Japanese Yen. It’s a very lightweight program with some basic, yet very unique and useful tools. It’s not a jack of all trades, but it is very good at what it does, and the results can be amazing if used well.

            Overall this program is rather simple in terms of functionality and overall ease of use. It’s essentially built for drawing tablets and runs rather smoothly. The tools such as watercolor, brush, crayon, and marker actually give the impression of the physical tool. The program is very flexible in terms of customization: changing the placement of the tools within the window and adding various brushes and color swatches.

            

            There are really only two minor issues with the programs overall function. One factor that is a disappointment is that there isn’t a tool for making basic shapes such as a square or ellipse. Although there are various tools for making selections, including a magic wand tool, these basic tools would greatly reduce the time during work flow. Another issue is some of the translations between the Japanese language and English on both the Paint Tool Sai program and the official website. The English itself is able to give the basic information, but some of the grammatical issues still need some work, especially since the program is such a useful tool. Also on rare occasions the program can be buggy at times, it may reject scans of a traditionally drawn object or simply not respond. It is unclear if these issues are directly related to the program.

           

            Paint Tool Sai is a very useful lightweight tool for artists. The program has been compatible since Windows 2000 and has overall been unchanged. It has a small but very useful variety of pen types and a very wide variety of color palettes. Since the development of the program, there hasn’t been much change with the exception of translating the language from Japanese to English. As of October 19, 2015 there is now a beta in testing for a new update to Paint Tool Sai Version 2. There isn’t a translation in English as of yet or a release date since the developer is only one person. This demo version already allows for the creation of circles, three point perspective rulers, and is also open to requests.