Sketchbook vs Paintrix Studio

Price

Paintrix Studio is free with every tool included, while Sketchbook is free to download with paid upgrades.

Sketchbook is free, and a one-time $2.99 Premium Bundle unlocks extras such as custom brushes, clipping masks, layer grouping, extra adjustments and PDF export. There is no subscription.

Paintrix Studio is free to download, and every brush, layer, tool and export is unlocked. Pro costs $4.99 a month and unlocks one thing: reopening projects you saved earlier, so new work is always free to start and finish in one sitting.

Platforms

Both run on iPad and iPhone. Only Sketchbook runs on Android, Mac and Windows.

Sketchbook is one app for iPhone and iPad, with separate versions for Android, Mac and Windows.

Paintrix Studio is one app for iPad and iPhone with the same features on both, and one Pro subscription covers every device on your Apple Account. There is no Mac, Windows or Android version.

Brushes

Sketchbook has a full set of pencils, markers, airbrushes and smear brushes that feel like their physical versions, and every brush is highly customizable. Creating, importing and exporting custom brushes is part of the Premium Bundle.

Paintrix Studio has 60 brushes in nine families: Oil Paints, Watercolor, Pencils, Charcoals, Pens, Spraypaint, Water Brushes, Basic and Manga. Oil brushes leave raised impasto and bristle grooves and drag the paint already on the canvas, and the ten Manga brushes include a G-Pen and Maru that thin and swell with your stroke speed. Apple Pencil pressure, tilt and hover work out of the box, with squeeze to undo on Apple Pencil Pro. You can save brush presets, but not import custom brushes.

Comics and manga

Sketchbook does not advertise comic panel or screentone tools; its strengths are sketching, rulers and perspective guides.

Paintrix Studio has a dedicated Manga / Comic canvas with 7 page sizes, from manga and B4 pages to comic strips, double-page spreads and vertical scroll pages for webtoons, and 23 ready-made panel layouts you can mirror. Panel borders sit on a locked layer you can unlock and edit, and the Manga brushes add dot screentones, hatching and stipple to the G-Pen, Maru, Fineliner and ink pens. It is all free. Lettering and speech balloons are not built in.

Layers and editing

Sketchbook: Layers come with a full set of blend modes. The Premium Bundle adds clipping masks, layer masks, layer groups, and adjustments such as blur, sharpen and brightness/contrast.

Paintrix Studio: Layers are unlimited and free, with clipping masks, alpha lock and live adjustments on every layer: brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, vibrance, temperature, tint, bloom, and drop and inner shadows. Selections cover rectangle, ellipse, lasso and two magic wands, the transform tool can flip, rotate and distort all four corners, and Smudge, Pinch, Bubble and Liquid Mode run on the GPU in real time. There are no layer blend modes.

Drawing tools and extras

Sketchbook is built for sketching and precision, with guides, rulers, symmetry, perspective guides and Predictive Stroke for clean lines and shapes. Its clean interface stays out of the way so the canvas gets the screen.

Paintrix Studio: Drawing aids include mirror mode with up to 12-way radial symmetry, Quick Shapes that keep your stroke's pressure and taper, linear, radial and angular gradients, 14 paintable materials such as gold, marble and wood, and a reference image layer. Draw Together lets two people paint on one canvas in real time from iPad or iPhone, and every painting records a timelapse you can export as video. There is no text tool, animation or PSD export.