PaintTool SAI
SYSTEMAX's lightweight Windows painting program for pen-tablet illustration, sold as a one-time licence.
- Starting price
- ¥5,500 one-time
- Free trial
- 31-day trial with full functions; open and save stop when it ends
- Output
- Digital paintings and illustrations
Overview
PaintTool SAI is a lightweight painting program from SYSTEMAX Software Development for drawing and painting with a pressure-sensitive pen tablet. It runs on Windows only and is sold online as a downloadable licence, with no boxed version. One licence costs 5,500 yen and covers every Ver.1 update, after a full 31-day trial. Ver.2 is available as a technical preview that Ver.1 licence holders can unlock.
Our take
Pick SAI if you paint on a Windows PC with a pen tablet and want a small, fast program you pay for once. For comic pages, panels and screentones, Clip Studio Paint or MediBang Paint suit that work better instead, and on a Mac or an iPad SAI is not an option, so look at Krita or Procreate. Wait for Ver.2 to leave preview rather than trusting important work to it.
Key Facts
| Category | |
|---|---|
| Starting price | ¥5,500 one-time Per software licence, including Japanese sales tax. PayPal converts the amount into your currency at its own rate. |
| Free trial | 31-day trial with full functions; open and save stop when it ends |
| Output | Digital paintings and illustrations |
| Hosting | Installed app for Windows (32-bit Ver.1) |
Screenshots
Placeholders. They are replaced as soon as the vendor sends material, and both open the same short form.
Features
- What it makes
- Digital paintings and illustrations drawn with a pressure-sensitive pen tablet, with anti-aliased strokes
- Raster, vector or both
- Mostly raster painting on normal layers, plus linework layers whose strokes are edited through control points and can be rasterized; the Ver.2 technical preview adds shape layers and text layers
- File formats and exchange
- Native .sai format, .sai2 in the Ver.2 technical preview; it also opens PSD, PNG and JPEG files, and PSB in Ver.2
- Colour management and print
- Composites with 16-bit ARGB channels, 64 bits per pixel, which the developer chose for speed and quality. The Ver.2 technical preview adds simple colour management that applies sRGB or sGray ICC profiles and keeps the profile of a loaded image
- Brand, styles and templates
- Custom brushes, textures and swatches, which can be carried over between versions
- Platforms
- Ver.1 runs on Windows XP to Windows 11 as a 32-bit app, on a physical PC and not a virtual machine, and does not support high-DPI monitors. The Ver.2 technical preview has 64-bit and 32-bit builds for Windows Vista to 11
- Licence and pricing model
- One-time licence of 5,500 yen including tax, sold by download only and paid by PayPal outside Japan. It covers all Ver.1.x.x updates and can be moved to a new PC with the same licence number, since the certificate is issued for each PC's System ID
- Export and handoff
- Ver.1 exports PSD, PNG including transparent PNG, JPEG, BMP and TGA, keeping DPI information in JPEG and PNG. The Ver.2 technical preview also saves PSB and can change the image size when saving
Integrations
Integrations coming soon.
Deployment and Support
- Deployment
-
- On-premise
- Support
-
- Email helpdesk
- Onboarding
-
- Documentation and knowledge base
Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Pay once and every Ver.1 update is included
- Runs on modest hardware, from 256 MB of RAM on Windows XP
- The licence moves to a new PC with the same licence number
- A full-featured 31-day trial before buying
Limitations
- Runs on Windows only
- Ver.1 does not support high-DPI monitors
- Open and save stop the moment the trial ends, so unsaved work is lost
- Ver.2 is still a technical preview
Pricing
-
Software licence (Ver.1)
¥5,500
One-time, including Japanese sales tax. Covers all Ver.1.x.x updates and unlocks save and load in the Ver.2 technical preview.
Best For
Alternatives and Comparisons
What users say
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