Drawing & Painting Features:  

For its humble price tag, ArtRage Deluxe has a surprising array of drawing and painting features, including canvas rotation, layer features, multi-monitor support, tracing, and strong tablet support. It even has a few features not found in bigger-name software, namely stencils. Stencils work with impeccable verisimilitude to their real-world counterparts: drop a stencil onto the canvas, paint or draw over the top of it, and when the stencil is removed, only the area inside the stencil shape is colored in. Easy enough, right? With ArtRage Deluxe, most definitely.

One compositional program attribute that leaves a lot to be desired, however, is ArtRage Deluxe's color management features, as well as annotations and selection tools. While these features aren't necessary for every digital artist, graphic designer or illustrator, they do, in fact, help accelerate the editing and refinement process, particularly when done in collaboration with another artist or under the supervision of a client. Most casual users should manage just fine, but for professional graphic designers, illustrators and digital artists, this can somewhat of a deal-breaker.

Brushes:  

ArtRage Deluxe has an impressive selection of brushes, including pen, pencil, airbrush, paintbrush, paint roller and palette knife, among others. There is a good mix of options, and each works well with a tablet. The only major disappointment is that, regardless of the different brushes, there seems to be only one kind of paint. Some other types of paint, such as oils or watercolors, could multiply the possibilities of the application. However, combined with only minimal brush customization, ArtRage Deluxe falls short of a complete arsenal of painting and drawing tools, severely limiting its functionality and potential artistic output.

Brush Quality:  

The brush quality is generally a good emulation of physical media, but there are a few times that results of a brush feels, well, fake. The edges tend to feel too sharp around places where the brush stroke changed direction, making additional strokes with more focused brush types necessary, or trial and, more likely, error with eraser tools. Another drawback is the grain texture of the crayon and chalk brushes. Both tend to do little justice to their non-digital, dry media counterparts. Nevertheless, all said these problems are easy to avoid if you are aware of them and are too minor to be outright deal-breakers.