Black Ink review
A technical Windows painting tool for artists who need deep brush and layer control.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Black Ink is a Windows digital painting application for artists and illustrators who want detailed control over brushes, layers, stylus input, and color handling. Its toolset covers painting, erasing, color sampling, fills, selections, transformations, cropping, zooming, rotation, symmetry, tiling, masking, and image adjustments. A limited-time trial is available for evaluation, while the main product is sold through personal and business licensing.
The published plans show three purchasing routes. Upgrade costs €8.79 one time for existing individual owners moving to Black Ink 2023. Individuals costs €33.99 one time and includes a personal-use license with perpetual use of Black Ink 2023. Business costs €99 per seat annually, is intended for legal entities, and provides one year of use. This structure suits individual artists who want a perpetual license, while teams and organizations need to account for annual per-seat billing.
Black Ink’s technical depth is its clearest distinction. The customizable brush engine includes controller editing and a brush shader language, while GPU-based rendering is designed for large documents and high-resolution canvases. Its nodal, non-destructive layer editor uses blending and masking operators, and stylus support includes Windows Ink and WinTAB APIs, pressure-response curves, azimuth, and tilt information. Symmetry, radial symmetry, tiling, ICC display profiles, sRGB Linear color space, stroke smoothing, autosave, and document recovery add control around the painting workflow. Choose Black Ink if you work on Windows and value procedural brushes, non-destructive layers, and detailed tablet data. Artists who need another operating system or prefer a free plan should look elsewhere.
Black Ink pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Customizable brushes with controller editing and shader language
- Nodal, non-destructive layers support blending and masking operators
- GPU rendering, stylus data, symmetry, and color profiles
- Where it doesn't
- Available only for Windows
- No free plan; individual use starts at €33.99 one-time
- Business licensing costs €99 per seat annually
Black Ink fact sheet, pricing and score →
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