Clip Studio Paint vs Adobe Fresco

Price

Adobe Fresco is free with every tool included, while Clip Studio Paint needs a subscription for full use.

Clip Studio Paint on iPad is a subscription. There is a 30-day free trial, after which you need a plan to save and export: PRO starts at $4.89 a month and EX, which adds multi-page comics and unlimited animation frames, at $9.69 a month on the US App Store. Plans are priced by how many devices you use.

Adobe Fresco is free, with thousands of brushes, unlimited layers and animation tools included. An optional subscription bundles it with Photoshop on iPad for $7.99 a month on the US App Store.

Platforms

Both run on iPad, iPhone and Windows. Only Clip Studio Paint runs on Mac, Android and Chromebook.

Clip Studio Paint runs on iPad, with a separate app for iPhone, desktop versions for Mac and Windows, and versions for Android and Chromebook. Buying a plan requires a Clip Studio account.

Fresco is one app for iPad and iPhone, and there is also a Windows version. Adobe's system requirements list no Mac or Android version. You can start drawing without signing in, but exporting and cloud saving need an Adobe account.

Brushes

Clip Studio Paint ships with brushes that mimic real art materials and lets you adjust brush shape, texture and paper quality in detail. Its Clip Studio Assets community offers thousands of artist-made brushes and materials.

Fresco includes thousands of free brushes: blendable raster brushes, vector brushes that stay sharp at any size, and Live Brushes that simulate watercolor and oil paint. It also imports Photoshop brushes.

Comics and manga

Clip Studio Paint is the most complete comic tool here: panel frames, speech balloons, text, effect lines and screentones, with multi-page projects for print, web comics and webtoons in the EX plan.

Adobe Fresco does not advertise comic tools such as panel layouts or screentones, though its text, shapes and vector brushes help with lettering and clean line art.

Layers and editing

Clip Studio Paint: Layers support masks and clipping across multiple layers, non-destructive color adjustment layers and gradient maps. Liquify, mesh transformation and puppet warp let you fix proportions after you draw, and Color Match pulls colors from a reference image.

Adobe Fresco: Layers are unlimited, with masks, clipping and Photoshop-style adjustment layers for brightness, hue/saturation and color balance. Liquify, free transform and a magic wand are included, and documents open directly in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Drawing tools and extras

Clip Studio Paint has posable 3D figures and 3D shapes for reference and perspective, perspective and symmetry rulers, Shading Assist for lighting, and frame-by-frame animation, with unlimited frames in EX.

Adobe Fresco: Drawing aids include Snap to Shape, rotational and reflective symmetry, rulers, and perspective grids you can build from a photo. Fresco also has frame-by-frame animation with motion paths, GIF and MP4 export, Adobe Fonts for text, and timelapse export.