I took your advice and got Clip Studio! Watching tutorials now:D I'd love to know what your favorite features are about it, if you're willing to talk about it-- no pressure at all, I'm just curious about your (obviously positive!) experience!

Ah, sorry this took a month to answer! I’m so rarely on desktop, and tumblr mobile is shit at informing one of asks! D: 

I’m sure by now you’ve had time to noodle around in the program, but if you’re still interested in what I like about Clip Studio Paint, here goes: 

Photoshop is a photo editing program that’s been modified to support drawing/painting, whereas Clip Studio was built specifically for those things. The UI is superficially similar, so I was skeptical at first about how much of a difference it would really make, but wow does it EVER! Stuff that I struggled for years to make PS do with third-party modifications, Clip Studio just…. has.… as part of it’s basic functions. 

Pros:

• convincing pencil brush, built right in!! It acts like a real goddamn pencil! way better than the best one I ever found and downloaded for PS. 
  
• watercolor painting brushes make lovely smooth washes
• oil brushes feel so like using real paint it’s almost shocking. 
• all brushes have very easily adjusted and customizable settings
• and the real reason I downloaded it at all: brush stabilization! even on mac! I have very shaky hands, and my inking in PS invariably looks like a steaming pile of shit. Not so in Clip Studio!! Still not up to my traditional inking standards, but not bad at all. 
• can export documents to photoshop WITH ALL LAYERS INTACT. 
• all sorts of built-in rulers that I haven’t played around with yet but look useful, including a perspective one. 
• I can’t emphasize enough how natural and intuitive drawing and painting is in this program. 
• ETA: ALSO! You can paint/draw with transparent as a color, so essentially every single brush can be an identical eraser. 

Cons:

• maybe I just haven’t discovered the correct setting, but when files are compressed with the ‘smooth’ setting, they lose a lot more crispness than they do in photoshop, and the ‘sharp’ setting makes them look terrible. This is easily remedied by exporting to PS before shrinking for web, though. 
  
• again, this might just be me being a novice, but I don’t love the gradient tool in Clip Studio.