There is an upside, however. Pixarra offers a fifteen-day free trial and sells the whole package for $129, a much more affordable deal than some of the other programs available. It only works on Windows though, so if you’re a die-hard Mac user and don’t run Windows, you’re out of luck.
Pixarra also claims that TwistedBrush is a good photo editing and retouching software. Again, I think it’s mediocre at best.
Functionality and User Friendliness:
Although it’s a standalone program, TwistedBrush has a sense of familiarity when you open it up, probably because a lot of the tools and features have been borrowed from more popular programs. But, a downside to TwistedBrush is that it seems to consume a lot of your computer’s resources (read: runs slow) when compared to the other programs I’ve written about and used in the past.
The Bottom Line:
When reviewing the program, I skipped the “features” section because I couldn’t really find any worth writing about. If you’re a Pixarra TwistedBrush user and you absolutely love this program, please tell me why. If you’re looking for a program to play around with some digital drawing, have some of the “real digital” effects, and do some photo retouching, this is a good buy for beginners because its much cheaper than Corel Painter.
Final Mentions:
The cartoon and manga (anime) creations I saw from users of TwistedBrush were quite good. If that’s what you’re into, this would be a good choice for you. Definitely DON’T buy this program as a photo-editing tool, there are better, less pricey applications for that. (Adobe Elements, for example).