17 Best Paint Alternatives For Mac 2023

Before we even discuss what Microsoft (MS) Paint is, let me start by saying that there is no built-in paint app on Mac. So, all the apps are downloaded and installed from the Mac App Store or a third-party platform.

Paint (Microsoft Paint) is a simple graphics/painting program included in all Microsoft Windows editions. It offers a wide range of capabilities that let you express your creativity while creating graphics.

There are several other tools that are similar to Paint. Among the more popular ones are Mischief, Pixelmator Classic, Deskscribble and others. Though the best Paint alternative for Mac is Sketchbook Pro. It is simple to use, has a great interface and offers excellent features for both pros and beginners.

More about Paint

In MS Paint, the Tool Box provides icons for creative tools. Here, tools enable you to draw shapes like squares, circles, and rectangles. You can avoid the hassle of manually coloring a region by using the Fill with the Color tool to fill in a specified area of the graphic with a selected color.

The “Image” option offers several frequently used tools that impact the overall image. For example, the “Flip and Rotate” option enables the editor to rotate the image differently. Microsoft Paint allows you to effortlessly forward an open file through email.

That said, the software doesn’t support macOS and has limited features. This is why I had to look for the best Paint alternatives to help you do your artistic work seamlessly.

Best Paint Alternatives For Mac

1. Mischief

Mischief is our first Paint alternative that works well on Mac. You can use it to produce stunning works of art. The user interface is simple to use. It gives you a wider range of pens, erasers, and other shaping tools.

You can have both the versatility of vectors and the depth of pixel-based brushes. The platform has a bigger zooming capacity compared to MS Paint. You can export a file in any resolution or size.

Your art can develop naturally without restrictions. There is no need to adjust the canvas size while sketching or configuring paper sizes, resolutions, or other parameters.

Finally, you’ll get the app for free.

2. Pixelmator Classic

Pixelmator is an artistically built program that is powerful, easy to use, and a fast image editor for Mac. It lets you enhance photos, draw, sketch, and paint.

You can use the fully functional painting tools to create artwork just like you would on a traditional canvas. There are realistic and stylized brush presets in different sizes and shapes to choose from.

You can paint or improve photographs more organically and have fun with Pixelmator since it gives you complete control over the brush tip strength, stroke style, and size, among other things.

With Pixelmator’s strong, pixel-accurate selection capabilities, you can effortlessly choose any portion of your image. It assists you in simply copying and pasting your selected portion onto a different backdrop or duplicating it. Next, tweak your pick by adding color modifications and other effects, as well as changing, relocating, or removing.

Discover a simple and elegant selection of handmade, intuitive, professional color correction tools. You can quickly modify the exposure, hue, saturation, shadows, highlights, brightness, contrast, and even replace and remix to enhance the color of a whole image or a single layer and entirely alter the feel and atmosphere of the image.

Pixelmator has released a new retouch extension feature for photos, which MS Paint doesn’t have. Additionally, the Pixelmator Distort Extension includes a selection of stunning-quality distort tools. Therefore, you can edit all your favorite images directly in the Photos app.

The platform also has several other powerful features, including Save for Web, Soft Proofing, and compatibility with all image file types, including Photoshop pictures with layers.

Moreover, you can instantly open photos from your iPhoto or Aperture collection from within Pixelmator’s Photo Browser for further editing.

It costs $39.99 to purchase Pixelmator Pro from the Mac App Store.

3. Deskscribble

Deskscribble is a paint application that you or the kids can use as a whiteboard for scribbles. Compared to MS Paint, the software is great for making presentations, taking notes, and visualizing ideas.

It has a click-through tool, pencil, eraser, thickness slider, color selector, and pencil to interface with other programs.

Furthermore, it includes full support for autosave, undo, and redo, so you don’t need to worry if you make a mistake because you can quickly reverse your actions and start again.

To get the app on the Mac App Store, you’ll have to pay $9.99.

Also Read: Krita vs Procreate

4. Paint X Lite

Paint X Lite is a free traditional painting program for drawing, coloring, and editing images. Use Paint X as a digital sketchpad to create basic images and artistic endeavors, or add text and designs to existing images, such as those captured with your digital camera.

You can effortlessly produce stunning digital art using the app’s enormous selection of brush settings. It includes tools such as the pencil, fill the bucket, color picker, and text tool. It also has a spray can tool.

This MS Paint alternative has a ton of shapes that make it effortless to draw objects like polygons, stars, and many more shapes. Besides, it has many simple-to-use tools.

It lets you flexibly rotate and resize shapes or selections. Also, you can trim a picture using a selection and flip it horizontally or vertically.

You can draw or fill shapes with the corresponding colors or paint over surfaces with a transparent color. Unlike MS Paint, it allows you to choose the latest used colors from the built-in color panel.

5. Pinta

Pinta is a free, open-source application for drawing and editing pictures. Its objective is to give people an easy-to-use yet effective means to sketch and edit pictures on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Use simple drawing tools to create freehand rectangles, lines, ellipses, and other shapes. Pinta comes with more than 35 adjustments and filters for picture editing.

Pinta has been translated into at least 55 languages. Don’t be frightened to try new things because Pinta records your history and allows you to undo it. It allows you to use layers to divide and organize picture components for simple editing, something you won’t find on MS Paint.

6. Krita

Krita is a free and open-source drawing application that includes all the tools needed to create stunning artwork on Mac. This Paint alternative for Mac is a favorite among most professional designers who want to produce original graphics, comics, and works of art.

There are over 100 professionally crafted brushes included. You can observe the breadth of effects these brushes can produce and the diversity of brushes Krita has to offer by using them.

To make your brush more uniform, use a stabilizer. Krita offers three alternative techniques to stabilize and smooth up your brush strokes.

Whereas MS Paint doesn’t support comics, Krita allows you to make comic panels using built-in vector tools. Using the text tool, you can also add text to your artwork.

Use a drawing tool to help you with vanishing points and straight lines. The assistant tool has nine different assistants to let you make the ideal shape. These tools vary from sketching ellipses to using the Fisheye Point tool to create a curvilinear perspective.

Krita has a vector, group, filter, and file layers in addition to painting. Layers may be combined, arranged, and flattened to keep your artwork tidy.

You can only open, save, modify, and create HDR and scene-referred photos with Krita. Moreover, you can adjust the view to study HDR photos and use it in the most cutting-edge processes from the film and visual effects industries, thanks to OCIO and OpenEXR compatibility.

When you set your workspace to animation, Krita becomes an animation studio. Layering your animations will enable you to give your drawings life, and you can export and share them with others.

7. FireAlpaca

You don’t need to worry if you are learning digital painting software. FireAlpaca is a free digital painting software accessible in ten languages and works on both Mac and Windows computers. And it’s easy to use.

It includes pens, pencils, an airbrush, and watercolors ready for use in the default settings. The most common brush types are the pen-like crisp stroke and the watercolor-like soft-edged appearance.

Using its 3D tool, you can create 3D artwork for your project like a cube. In contrast, MS Paint doesn’t support 3D. There are many comic template options available by default.

You can quickly add your pattern or picture to numerous effect brushes. The rotationally symmetric pattern brush and symmetric brush produce unusual patterns.

8. Sketchbook Pro

Sketchbook Pro is a drawing, painting, and sketching program for everyone who enjoys drawing. Compared to Paint, Sketchbook Pro has a high-quality feature set and flexible tools, making it a favorite among artists and illustrators.

Everyone adores Sketchbook Pro’s intuitive user interface and effortless drawing experience, which removes distractions and allows you to concentrate on developing and conveying your ideas.

This application has a variety of brush kinds, including markers, pencils, airbrushes, paint, smear, and more. You can create whatever style you choose since brushes are so adaptable.

Bring life to your sketch by adding color gradually. Sketchbook Pro permits you to use a range of coloring techniques, such as radial gradients and dynamic linear. You can create flawlessly smooth strokes using the Predictive Stroke tool, which you can also use to make ellipses, French curves, curved rulers, and traditional rulers.

When using a stylus, Sketchbook Pro is incredibly responsive; the experience is quite similar to drawing on paper. You can see the depth and directness your hand intended when you draw since Sketchbook Pro faithfully reproduces your strokes with stylus tilt.

The symmetry tools in Sketchbook Pro allow you to quickly create elaborate drawings by reflecting your pen strokes in the horizontal, vertical, and radial directions.

You can download the application on the Mac App Store for $19.99.

9. ArtRage

ArtRage is a unique computer painting program for Mac. It is intended to unleash your creative side by providing various tools for drawing and sketching that mimic natural, everyday objects. This implies that you can start painting immediately without spending much time learning how to do it.

In comparison to MS Paint, if you’re new to painting and sketching, you can use the Tracing Image option to import a photo and use it as a guideline while painting.

Also, you can allow ArtRage to choose the colors from the image so you can concentrate on your brushstrokes and improve your abilities. It’s simple and enjoyable to create craft items on your computer using tools like glitter or stickers.

Working with the app’s layers, blend modes, and other digital tools is still an option for digital artists who wish to add some organic paint to their works. ArtRage provides text, flood fills, cloning, and selection tools to streamline the operation.

It’s simple to use ArtRage alongside your other programs, thanks to supporting PSD pictures that are imported and exported with all of their layers, blend modes, groups, and text layers.

You’ll find ArtRage to be comfortingly familiar if you’re a classical artist who has shied away from digital art tools. You can use many of your well-known approaches while using this program rather than taking the time to learn a whole new set of tools and processes.

Apply color in blobs and combine them with a palette knife while using parameters that correspond to how you would use actual pigment. Even while working, you can pin reference photos to your canvas.

Use ArtRage to stimulate your paintings so you won’t have to pay for canvas or paint, and treat your computer as a supplement to your traditional artwork rather than a substitute for it.

ArtRage is available for Windows and Mac computers. However, there are three app versions for Mac with one-time payments for each: ArtRage Vitae for $79.99 on the Mac App Store, ArtRage Lite for $29.90, and ArtRage 6 for $59.00.

Also Read: Best Spriter Alternatives

10. Inkscape

Inkscape is a robust drawing software for Mac that can handle even the most demanding artwork, and it’s free. It allows you to manipulate objects and create the ideal hue or shape. Besides, the program makes it easy to create excellent vectors.

This program also has many additional top-notch capabilities, like path operation, a tool for creating clone patterns and setups, text support, and node editing. In addition, it can work with a wide range of file types, giving it an edge over MS Paint.

11. GIMP

GIMP helps make your photos seem better by correcting perspective distortion in them. Besides, GIMP has a large selection of painting tools compared to Paint.

GIMP’s major function is to create icons, design elements, graphics, mockups, etc. You have access to tools like airbrushes, clones, pencils, and brushes. The tools enable you to produce beautiful sketches and images.

All paint tools to achieve high-quality anti-aliasing also enable sub-pixel sampling. This free software comes with a potent blend tool and gradient editor to give your photographs even more improvements.

It gives the ability to generate custom brushes per your drawing requirements, another standout feature of GIMP. It has excellent color management tools to guarantee accurate color reproduction on printed and digital media.

Furthermore, you receive tools for transformation like rotate, scale, shear, and flip. Also, it supports all necessary file types, including JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. It supports specialized usage formats like PCX, BMP, and others.

12. Tux Paint

Tux Paint is a free drawing software for children ages 3 to 12. It is used in classrooms all around the globe as a painting exercise for computer literacy.

The application combines an intuitive user interface with entertaining sound effects and a loving cartoon mascot that directs kids in using it.

Tux Paint’s latest version is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. The platform provides a blank canvas and a selection of drawing materials.

The platform enables the animation of Brushes. Plus, it has shapes, text, labels, a color filter, a line, and many other features. Plus, parents or instructors can add new brushes for the kids, a feature you won’t find in MS Paint.

Tux Paint is also popular among adults, who use it for nostalgia. Plus, it has gained popularity for producing “glitch art” because of the abundance of special effect capabilities it offers.

13. Paint S

Paint S is a free paint app that allows you to draw graphics or alter existing photographs. You can quickly draw, rotate, and crop photographs using the imaging tool and editor. You can also simply add text to the images and freely modify them.

Opening and saving photos in various well-liked formats, such as PNG, JPEG, and BMP, is one of the app’s primary functions. What makes it better than Pain is that it provides a wide range of tools, such as ellipse, fills, text, and eyedropper, as well as curved texts, cut/copy/paste, undo/redo, and transparency.

Paint S also allows you to choose and eliminate any undesired components from your photographs and paste images from other Mac programs such as Safari, Keynote, and others. You can print pictures straight from the app.

14. Tayasui Sketches

Tayasui Sketches makes painting and sketching on your Mac as simple as taking up a pen and making your creations. The user interface’s drawings were created using a stylus strategy.

This app has a better color scheme than Paint. It blends your natural sketching experience with an almost infinite number of brush options.

It features a watercolor brush that is amazingly realistic, and its colors flow and blend to produce amazing effects. Make gorgeous gradients to give your paintings depth or punch.

Simply choose the type of paper, choose a tool from the sidebar, and start drawing to utilize the program.

Aside from that, learning how Tayasui Sketches works won’t take hours of fiddling with the app’s settings or attending drawn-out classes. Interestingly the app is free to download.

15. Paint X

Paint X is a free virtual sketchpad that you can use to draw, color, edit photographs, create pictures, and add text and designs to other pictures, like those captured with your digital camera.

Your photographs will come to life in colors of watercolor, crayon, calligraphy, etc., thanks to the realistic digital “brushes.” It contains over 150 built-in paintbrushes, which is more than what MS Paint has. This includes brushes for calligraphy, ink, blur, etc.

If you’ve ever used MS Paint, you’ll discover that Paint X is more user-friendly. There are available pencils, erasers, fills, text, color pickers, rectangles, and free-form selection tools. Moreover, there are 25 pre-made shapes included, including curves, ovals, clouds, and others.

You can purchase the application for $9.98 for Mac.

16. Paintbrush

Paintbrush is a lightweight Mac paint app that can open and save several image formats, such as PNG, TIFF, BMP, JPEG, and GIF. With its simple tools and colors, Paintbrush features an easy-to-use interface that you can use to customize pictures or drawings. The Mac version of the program is free to download and use

In contrast to MS Paint, you can also rapidly trim a photo, add text, enjoy doodling, paste photos taken from popular Mac programs like iWork, open and save to most image formats, and paste images. This app supports transparency for file formats like PNG and GIF.

Paintbrush comes with an intuitive and simple format user interface that will bring out the van Gogh in you fast.

17. Patina

Patina is a Paint alternative with a straightforward drawing program that you can use for personal or professional purposes, such as creating diagrams, outlining thoughts, painting pictures, or sketching ideas.

To assist you in editing your photographs’ colors, cropping, rotating, and saving, Patina provides some basic image management tools. Additional features, such as different brush types, transparency, and drawing, are available.

You can create things like presentations or comics with Patina, which you can’t accomplish with MS Paint. It has a beautiful interface that is a pleasure to use. Moreover, Patina supports JPG and PNG files in addition to PDF.

You can buy the app for $2.99 by clicking the buy button on their website.

Final Word

Our best pick for the best Paint alternative for Mac is Sketchbook Pro. It has an intuitive user interface that allows you to concentrate on developing and conveying your ideas. Also, it comes with a high-quality feature set, making it a favorite among artists.

Sketchbook Pro includes a huge collection of brushes, markers, pencils, paints, etc. Plus, it lets you use a range of coloring techniques that can bring your art to life.