Clip Studio Paint vs Core Image Tools
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Clip Studio Paint
Create digital art with a vast array of brushes, textures, and colors. This app offers tools for drawing, painting, comic creation, and animation, with features like 3D models for reference and advanced layer options. It provides a free trial and subscription plans for full access.
- Unlimited custom brushes
- Realistic color mixing
- Artist-made materials
- 3D model references
- Comic creation tools
- Animation features
- Advanced layer editing
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Start drawing and painting in a free 30-day trial. ・Up to 3 months free with your first plan ・Subscribe for the time you want to use it. Get all the latest features, materials, and cloud storage (10 GB)! *Please note that after your trial, you will need to make an in-app payment to save and export. Clip Studio Paint makes drawing a piece of cake, in any style! Whether you are a beginner or a pro, Clip Studio Paint will improve your creative experience while helping you grow. Now with new, powerful features! Unlimited amount of brushes at your fingertips to recreate any style - Use brushes with the same textures as real art materials - Adjust details such as brush shape and paper quality to your liking - Make unique colors with realistic color mixing, like traditional paints - Draw with transparency to erase, so no need to switch brushes Countless artist-made materials - Level up your art with free materials, for backgrounds and more - Discover community-made brushes from creators worldwide - Add details with materials like frills and more Coloring made easy - Easily color even with line gaps using the magnetic lasso tool - Lock transparency to paint over layers without affecting other areas - Set light source and shadow position with Shading Assist - Instantly reference and apply colors from an image to your art using Color Match - Enhance your art with filters like Chromatic Aberration, Retro Film, Pencil, and more Learn alongside other creators - Loads of official tutorials and creator tips available - Watch tutorials on our YouTube channel, for step-by-step advice - Ask questions on the Clip Studio Ask community Create the perfect reference with 3D models - Use 3D drawing figures to help with drawing anatomy - Customize character face and body models with beginner-friendly tools - Attach 3D objects like hats and shoes to characters for more specific references - Use 3D shapes to draw perspective Adjust after you draw - Liquify to make adjustments to the balance of your illustrations - Mesh Transformation allows you to transform to different shapes - Change up the poses of your character drawings with Puppet warp - Non-destructive color adjustment layers to get your art just right - Gradient maps give color to your grayscale illustrations Stress-free layer features - Assign colors and make multiple columns of layers to browse them at a glance - Enjoy the freedom of masking and clipping on multiple layers to edit and move your work - Add various effects to apply to the layer in a non-destructive way The ultimate comic creation app - All the tools you need for comic creation, from storyboard to finishing touches - Panel frames, speech balloons, text, effect lines, and screen tones in an instant - Make data for prints, web comics, manga, or webtoons (6 GB+ memory recommended) - Manage multi-page projects Professional animation, on any device - Use all the same tools as animation studios - Unique features allow you to draw your frames as you like - Enjoy a pencil and paper look and feel, but digitally - Expand your drawings to 4K resolution without losing quality by saving it as vector data ●Grade features ・PRO: All the tools you need to create stunning illustrations & short animations ・EX: All the above + multi-page functionality for comic/manga artists and unlimited animation frames *Clip Studio account needed to buy a plan. ● Target Devices and Specifications ・Minimum free storage space: 3GB, 4GB recommended ・Recommended display size: 10.5"+ Please see the following for supported devices. https://support.clip-studio.com/en-us/faq/articles/20200153 Supported pressure-sensitive pens ・Apple Pencil ● In-app purchases ・Required to save the canvas and export it to various file formats on iPad. Note: You will be charged to the Apple ID used for subscription. Terms of Service https://www.celsys.com/en/information/csp/ https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Core Image Tools
This app offers over 100 image editing tools with a simple interface for various effects. Easily edit, enhance, resize, and apply filters to your photos across multiple devices. Its intuitive workflow allows for seamless, step-by-step image manipulation without complex file management.
- Over 100 image editing tools
- Simple and intuitive user interface
- Multi-platform support (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Vision)
- Resize images with added pixels
- Flip and mirror functionality
- Various blur effects
- Chroma-keying tools
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Over 100 powerful image editing tools, presented in the simplest user interface. Like most workshops, you use several tools to accomplish a task. Core Image Tools is a large toolbox to reach into, to accomplish many complex effects, one simple step at a time. Lightweight yet Powerful: Edit, enhance, resize, rotate, & add effects to your photos|images from the palm of your hand, while you're on the go, or also from your desktop|laptop. Multi-Platform: Use the same app across your devices - iPhones, iPads, Macs, & Vision. Super-Simple Workflow: Pick a Photos image, apply an effect, tap save - done! Want more? Pick that saved image, apply some other effect to it, tap save - done! Loop the image through as many edits|effects as desired & always have a hardcopy in Photos of each step along the way. Plus you'll always have your original, & never had to type in a single filename throughout the entire process. Resize Images: ACTUALLY resize images, not just crop them down or zoom in. Also, you can ADD color|transparent|semi-transparent pixels to any edge of an image to resize it, or offset it, using 'Border | Underlay'. Flip|Mirror: Quickly mask|mirror a brand name out of your selfie. Flip|mirror an image, horizontally and|or vertically, with one tap. Use 'Skew' to straighten, keystone-correct, zoom, mirror, & crop all at once. Smooth: Use 'Blur, Selfie Smoother' to iron out a few wrinkles, de-focus skin blemishes, or smooth out other unwanted details. Line|Edge Drawn: Make an image look as if it was drawn|sketched using an ink pen, pencil, charcoal, colored pencils, colored chalk, light-pen, watercolored, wax-scratched (scratch-art), or made entirely out of dots|square pixels|points|hex-pixels|or crystalized. Bump Distortion: Kids of all ages (Mom? Dad?) love to swell up, or shrink down, faces & parts of people - give dad a superhero chin, a sibling one big eye & one little one, a bubbled alien-forehead of a friend - endless fun. Wish you had a smaller nose - shrink it. Wish you had bigger biceps or shoulders - pump 'em up. Wonder what implants would look like - find out. Zoom in on, & bring attention to, any feature in an image, especially for technical uses, like highlighting a capacitor on a PCB, or a component of a wiring schematic. Overlay Images: Including resizing, repositioning, & rotating them. Overlay your logo or business card over an image. Also, you can make an entire image of a transparent, or semi-transparent color & overlay that over your image, adding a color filter effect to the entire image. Chroma-Keyers (6 types!): Remove red, green, or blue-screen, or any color. Maybe make transparent overlays out of them? Maybe use 'Polygon | Star' to make color-keyed shapes for transparency masks. Checkerboard: Make checkerboard designs - just pick your colors, including clear|transparent. Blurs: Gaussian Blur, Zoom Blur, Motion Blur, Glow|Bloom, & other blur effects. 3D|Graphics|Cube Images: Make your textures|shaders, tile them, rotate them, make normal|bump maps from them for enhanced lighting effects. Mirrored|seamless tiles, multicolored gradients (linear & radial, plus gradients scale perfectly & tile infinitely from one small image - very efficient). Use 'Alpha as Grayscale' to map out image transparencies for your texture|shader's opacity channel. The best skybox|cube image tools too! Color & Light Adjusters: Many options - brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, gamma, vibrance, opacity. Try 'Dark Document Enhancer' on a dark document or a scan that you want to enhance. Grayscale Images: Select from 7 grayscale modes each honed for specific imaging challenges. Animated Image Player: Play, pause, slow down, speed-up, & reverse animated images. Kaleidoscopes: Do you like kaleidoscopes? Oh yeah! Gotcha covered there! Over a dozen types. Infinite possibilities just from one image, & the default image is of the most beautifully colored flowers. Developers: Make App Icons, Buttons, & Radio buttons.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Core Image Tools at 100% against Clip Studio Paint's 46%. Core Image Tools also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 11) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Clip Studio Paint's advantage is price (Free vs $0.99) and ratings volume (14K vs 3). On update cadence, ads and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Clip Studio Paint is free to download; Core Image Tools costs $0.99 up front. Clip Studio Paint sells 11 in-app purchases, starting at $4.89 per month. Core Image Tools asks for nothing beyond the download.
Core Image Tools holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Clip Studio Paint has 14K ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 46% of Clip Studio Paint's written reviews are positive against 100% of Core Image Tools's.
Clip Studio Paint ships an update every 3 weeks, Core Image Tools every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Clip Studio Paint | Core Image Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 4.7 (14K ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 45.8% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 14K — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 18 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 583 MB | 60 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | CELSYS,Inc. | Lino Bailey |
Customer experience
Clip Studio Paint
Core Image Tools
Bugs and requests
Clip Studio Paint
Reported bugs
4 issues- Inability to save work without subscription
- Laggy performance with large files
- Unreliable auto-save and recovery
- Issues with brush and tool responsiveness
Requested features
4 requests- One-time purchase option
- Improved file management and cloud integration
- Simplified interface for casual users
- More animation and 3D tools
Core Image Tools
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Clip Studio Paint
- PRO Monthly$4.891 Month
- PRO Monthly Single-Device Plan3 Days trial$4.891 Month
- PRO Monthly Single-Device Plan3 Months trial$4.891 Month
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- PRO Monthly Dual-Device Plan3 Days trial$7.991 Month
- EX Monthly3 Months trial$9.691 Month
- EX Monthly Single-Device Plan3 Months trial$9.691 Month
- EX Monthly Single-Device Plan3 Days trial$9.691 Month
- EX Monthly Dual-Device Plan3 Days trial$13.491 Month
- PRO Annual$28.901 Year
- PRO Annual Single-Device Plan3 Days trial$28.901 Year
- PRO Annual Single-Device Plan3 Months trial$28.901 Year
Core Image Tools
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Clip Studio Paint free?
Is Core Image Tools free?
Which has better reviews, Clip Studio Paint or Core Image Tools?
Do Clip Studio Paint or Core Image Tools have ads?
Which is updated more often, Clip Studio Paint or Core Image Tools?
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