BLACK INK drawing software for high quality generative art

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Add to cart | $59.99 BLACK INK

At a time when main digital painting solutions give you predefined tools to obtain the most traditional looking result, Black Ink offers the freedom to create and use brushes that you will only see on a computer. Tweak, combine, create new tools and discover the power of generative art!

Windows

Version 0.509.3810

The new kind of digital painting

More about Black Ink

Infinite possibilities

With Black Ink anyone can create unique custom brushes. Just browse our forums to find and download new tools to add to your collection.

You can easily tweak them yourself and if you’re feeling like an inventor, explore our unique controllers system, create your ultimate brush and share it!

The controllers are a new tool never seen in 2D painting packages before. They open access to the behavior of every brush parameter and give full control to the user. Every parameter can act exactly as you want for an infinite number of combinations. Check the samples included in Black Ink to see how different the results can be, using only the power of the controllers.

Every brush can be used with the other innovative functions of Black Ink like the gradients or the image-based color, for an infinity of different uses. All these combinations unveil the power of generative art, where your computer becomes a complete and unique creative tool and a new inspiration source.

Amazing speed

Black Ink’s unique GPU-based rendering engine enables blazing fast performance on any picture resolution. 64K pictures will become your new standard before you even realize it!

Unique experience

Black Ink also feature a fresh user experience with its clean and responsive user interface, instant access to brushes and colors history and real time visual brush preview.
Layer editor nodal unique in the field.

Black Ink development

We are an independent company dedicated to the development of Black Ink. Every license purchased today grants every future Black Ink updates free of further charge and a free Steam key when it is released. No subscription or paid update. But if you want to really support for a sustainable and assured development check our Patreon.

What are we working on

If you want to catch up on our current development follow this link

FEATURES
FAQ
CHANGE LOG

 
 Trial 
 Full 

UNIQUE BRUSH CUSTOMIZATION TOOL
 
Controllers are a whole new way to customize your brushes. Assign pressure, speed, randomness in any parameter you want and make your brush act exactly as you like using a simple visual block-based system.

Want a simple pressure sensitive opacity? A speed driven size? Creating your perfect brush is as simple as plugging a behavior block in the desired output.

But controllers also are a powerful and limitless tool thanks to a collection of simple mathematical functions. Mix values, experiment with rotations, scales and gradients and you will discover countless unique effects! These infinite possibilities are what makes Black Ink’s generative art a unique creation experience. 
  
Trial: Can’t save controllers branches
 
Can't save

LAYER EDITOR
The Layer editor is a nodal representation whose layers of your composition will be displayed at the end.

The Layer Editor will then be enriched with new operators allowing you to achieve effects that are very difficult to achieve in traditional management.

RICH COLOR MODES
Black Ink’s 64 bits rendering engine creates rich, bright, beautiful colors to use in the various creative color modes.
 
In addition to the classic solid color, Black Ink offers two other powerful color modes:

Gradients are used in many ways to add variations and effects. The powerful gradient editor offers a lot of options including the ability to select multiple colors and modify them simultaneously.

The image-Based color lets you provide a picture that will automatically drive the brush color. It can be used with any brush to create incredible effects on existing pictures.
 
HIGH PERFORMANCE
 
Black Ink allows you to draw on very large resolutions (64K per 64K) without any drop in performance or responsiveness. You don't feel the weight of working on large pictures like you do in other painting software and even the largest brushes are perfectly fluid. Nothing slows down your gesture and expression.

To achieve this, Black Ink uses your graphic card's power to ensure the best rendering performance possible.
 
HUGE PICTURE SIZE
 
Your document is saved as a high definition picture with incredible details.

Trial: Image size reduced on save
 
Limited

FAST AND PRODUCTIVE USER INTERFACE
 
The brush history lets you recall previous brush settings instantly.
The color history keeps previously used colors for quick access.
Favorite colors lets you save colors and recall them in every Black Ink session.
The real time brush preview shows how the final brush is affected by every setting you change.
 
 BLACK INK | Price $59.99
 
Windows

 How many times can I activate my license? 
Your license can be activated twice without any intervention from us. After that, as a natural person, you can request more activation rights with a simple e-mail demand.



What about corporate entities?



Legal persons (companies) need to buy per-seat licenses. If you need to equip a large number of computers, please contact us to discuss multi-seat offers.

 
 License Activation doesn't work. 
If the license activation doesn't work, a message will appear explaining the error.
 
- If it is a login or password error you can try to log in our website to check if they are correct. Your login is the email adress you provided and in case of lost password you can ask for a new one.
 
- If it is a "service unavailable" error, please check your internet connection and your firewall setup.
  
For any other reason you can use the error window to send the report to our technical support or contact us by email and we will make sure the problem is resolved as soon as possible.
 Black Ink's activation stop and waits for server response. 
Sometimes online activation takes more time than usual. 
We recommend to wait for 5 to 10 minutes before closing the activation window. 
In the event of a real critical error, a message will appear.
 I purchased a Black Ink license but I will not use it, can I be refunded? 
We only refund non activated licenses. 

If you purchased a license and did not activate it within Black Ink yet you can ask for a refund but once the activation has been made on at least one computer we can’t refund you. 

Please take advantage of the free demo period of Black Ink before purchasing a license. This demo period allows you to try Black Ink for free with unlimited features for a certain amount of time so you can make the best informed decision.
 I already purchased Black ink. Will there be additional charges for the updates? 
No, once you have purchased a Black Ink license, it grants you every future update for free
 How to activate the full version? 
Once you purchased your license on our website, open Black Ink's main menu and clic on "activate Black Ink".
 
Enter the login and password you used on the website when you made the purchase and click on the "activate" button.
 Do you have plans to release Black Ink on Mac or Linux (or both!) in the near future? 
For the moment Black Ink is only available for Windows systems (XP/Vista/7/8). A Mac version will follow in the future but we don’t have any plans for a Linux port yet
 Black Ink performs slowly on my computer. 
Unfortunately your computer's setup is not powerful enough because Black Ink needs a dedicated graphic card.
 
You can visit this website and look up your video card. For a good performance a "G3D rating" of 500 is needed but we recommend a rating of 1000 or above for the best experience.
 When I save my picture I see a frame with Black Ink's logo, how do I get rid of these? 
You are using the trial version of Black Ink, if you purchase the full version you will be able to save you original and untouched picture.

0.509.3810

Hotfix..

0.504.3788

more infos...

0.488.3652

Fix the Os explorer issue

0.487.3648

Fix trial version issue see

0.484.3639

more infos...

0.423.3471

more infos...

0.421.3458

Layer editor panel
more infos

0.357.2643

Rotation bug when using the Hold R shortcut in a Black Ink window with a scale different of 100%
When using the Hold+S or Hold+D to change the size or opacity of my current brush, the command releases after 1 seconds

0.356.2642

Native High DPI Screen display support.
more infos

0.346.2604

the "Activate Black Ink" command is missing

0.345.2599

Shortcut Customization
A rendering indicator shows if the canvas isn’t 100% accurate due to a background rendering process
more infos

0.301.2448

Use shaders on brushes
BSL Editor
Brush Preview Panel
more..

0.249.2089

Straight Line Draw mode( Shortcut: K )
Pressing the Shift key when drawing now displays a Snap Angle Wheel. The angles can be edited in the Straight Line Parameters
Angle snap parameters on the main Toolbar
more..

0.225.1998

Secondary Viewport. This panel displays another view of the canvas with the same drawing features and live editing.
U shortcut: toggle Secondary Viewport
more..

0.205.1923

DirectX11 renderer when available
Hold Z shortcut: set the drawing smoothness
more..

0.173.1777

Selection tools :
- Create Polygonal Lasso.
- Tip : When you Adjust a Polygonal Lasso primitive
  - Use Shift+Click to add a new control point
  - Use Alt+Click to remove a control point or an edge
- Create Lasso.
more infos..

0.168.1749

Selection tools :
Ctrl+C shortcut (copy selection from the current layer)
more infos..

0.161.1686

User can now use the .JPG image format in Black Ink for saving and loading.
Command Menu for each layer (in the upper left of the layer thumbnail) :
more infos..

0.151.1634

7 new default brushes (Swarm, Follow Bubbles, Hard fur, Nasca Fan, Garland, Dot Aligned, Rake).
Scatter parameter for brush parameters (even old default brushes have a scatter effect now)
2D vector operators for controllers
Glitch & Artefacts on AMD HD video of class 68xx, 79xx ( issue )
more infos..

0.144.1617

Main Menu > Edit > Disable Precise Stylus position. This option is useful If you still encounter stroke offsets after using Reset Stylus Calibration. This will read position from the mouse pointer and only take the pressure from the tablet’s pen.
Crash when press on the num pad ‘9’ ( more infos )
more infos..

0.140.1596

Straight Line constraint through 2 directions. Hold Shift Key while drawing to activate the Straight Line drawing constraint.
Random Crash ( occurred frequently when saving a PNG ).
more infos..

0.135.1579

Trial system now offer 2 hour of Black Ink without any limitations
Shortcut Hold S to set the size of the current brush
Shortcut Hold D to set the opacity of the current brush
more infos

0.128.1572

The canvas display a checker background instead of the default color if there’s NULL alpha.
There’s no more default background color when saving in PNG.
more infos..

0.119.1563

Layers !!! ( better late than never )
- Up to 8 layers in a document for best GPU compatibility
- 12 different layers blending modes with real time preview
- Preserve transparency option
Brush cursor when drawing on the canvas now displays the size of the brush (instead of the previous default windows mouse pointer)
Ctrl+R shortcut to reset the canvas rotation
more infos..

0.117.1504

Correct Gamma curve when saving a PNG ( see this thread for more infos )
more infos..

0.116.1503

Can't save in PNG format under Windows XP ( see this thread for more infos )
more infos..

0.115.1500

.BKD proprietary format for quick and complete picture save. Only available in the Full version.
Crash when loading a PNG without alpha channel.
more infos..

0.111.1444

New rendering engine
- 64bits color support for better blending
- Improved undo/redo latency
- Better rendering performance (most visible on the volute brush)
more infos...

0.103.1393

Brush Manager ( you can now save and manage your brushes )
Stroke Parameters ( stroke direction, stylet tilt, stylet azimuth(tilt orientation), canvas positions, view position )
10 new default Brushes
more infos..

0.90.1355

Crash after the splash screen on Windows XP.
more infos..

0.89.1346

Controller Editor. Usefull to visually create / program custom behavior for each parameter of your brush
The slider system for float parameter of Brush react more intuitively when folded
more infos..

0.81.1290

Crash when opening the New.. dialog.
Crash when opening the Activate dialog.
more infos..

0.80.1284

Tooltip system added. buttons now display their meaning. Another usefull use is the possibility to view a big version of each brush preview
more infos..

0.78.1279

Navigation Tools. Usefull to transform the view of the Canvas
Smooth Canvas transformation
more..

0.77.1274

Brush parameters : Blending type
Brush parameters : Shape type
Brush parameters : Boolean
System menu for BlackInk ( RightClick on the TaskBar )
more ..

0.76.1267

Auto selection of the Eraser when flipping the stylus
You can now hide the entire UI when drawing
Main Menu has been re-designed
Now Shaders are pre-compiled and delivered in the installation package -> Loading time of BlackInk significantly decreased after re-installation/update.
more..

0.74.1265

Crach when Dragging a SolidColor
more infos

0.73.1264

Application DeadLocked when using the Crepe Brush
Rendering bug around the Eraser preview
Random crash report when closing the application
No UI element animation in random case
more infos

0.72.1262

New - you can load Jpg file for Image-based color
New - Brush and Eraser keyboard shortcut shortcut
Fixed - the rendering of little brush thumbnail was sometimes not correct.
Improved performance for the application when modifing Brush parameter
more infos..

0.71.1257

New - Eraser Brush is now available
Fixed - Tablet detection bug when multitple ones are installed on a computer
Trial Borders are more restrictive now only a safe zone of 1024x768 is available

0.69.1254

Fixed - Some crash related to gradient editor
New - Debug session accessible by password
Better main canvas rendering after Undo/Redo
Documentation is in .chm and now reflect last change of BlackInk
The Opacity parameter is now always visible in the Shape section of the brush

0.67.1248

Canvas rendering has been greatly revisited. This managmeent now can handle efficiently Brush who need a lot of rendering power and still give feedback to user with progressive adaptation of the rendering. This feature then Fixed the crash of the Volute brush on some PC.
Unfortunatly we need to fix some rendering glitches on the canvas when we do Undo/Redo actions.
Veil Brush has been renamed to Volute

0.65.1227

All float number parameters for each brush are back !!
a lot of improvement in this area, so try it as you like but keep in mind that controllers are not accessible for now. ( all parmeter are initialised with some default controllers not visible for the moment )
New - Veil Brush ( look here for a sample )

0.64.1222

Color Parameters controls fully redesigned for better usability
Brush Parameters bar redesigned
New - Color picker has now a EyeDropper functionnality
New - Color favorites
Regression - Controller of parameters not available
Regression - Size parameters not available

0.58.1167

In Trial Version you can only save a 640x480 pictures with a little BlackInk Watermark
Updated the design of the Border of the application
Fixed - Window obscuring the TaskBar when the application is Maximized

0.56.1164

New - Funky Splashscreen

New - Borderless window for the application for Windows Vista / 7 or later

0.50.1153

The Trial Version Runtime watremark has been redesigned
Use the Keyboard shortcut Space instead of Shift for Canvas panning
Fixed - Crash when manipulation Controller

0.46.1148

Fixed - False positive Malicious Detection on Chrome
Fixed - Rendering bug on DirectX9 hardware for the main canvas & the preview
Fixed - Freeze in the ImageReference control
Fixed - Crash on startup or when loading the Activate window
Fixed - Crash on loading image for ImageReference