Photoshop all the way! Though I'll occasionally scan in pencil sketches first and then work over those. I've heard good things about Manga studio but never had a chance to try it!
yeah, manga studio has a learning curve, but once you get the basics and watch the video tutorials its pretty straight forward.
the panels tools are a life saver. It honestly makes things so much easier if I'm not doing to many free floating frames.
I remember trying Krita, the tools really are impressive but intimidating for me (so many options)
I use Manga Studio EX 5 for everything up to the inking stage, I do all of my coloring and beyond in Photoshop CS3 XD
I used to be a Photoshop user, but then I got a Manga Studio to the knee. Now it's Manga Studio aaaaaaaaaalllllllllll the way!
Manga studio and photoshop are my saviors and corel paint is nice once in a while because of the custom brushes I've made. MS for inking and PS for colour. XD
@AnnaLandin I love the Ex versions of MS. I use 5EX the only old feature I think they should bring back is easily generating zoomlines and movement lines.
I definitely miss this in the plain MS5 too, yeah! However, I stick with 4EX because I find their speechbubble-generator tool a lot more comfortable to handle than MS5's, and also the panelling tool. I've experimented with MS5's panelling tools, and I just don't feel as at home in it as I do in MS4EX. But that's very much a personal preference!
One more Manga studio user here. Like Anna Landin I use both 4 EX and 5 for different things at different times. I'm in the process of trying to migrate fully to manga studio 5.
Hmmm. You think so? I certainly don't know how to save brushes, but I'm sure if it's buggy at all. So far its as useful as I need it to be 
Manga Studio is great for comics, and I do everything in that 
Before I got it, I used SAI, but not being able to use text layers in the same program was really annoying... Still use SAI for most of my non-comic drawings
I use DAZ3d for a lot of things these days:
- For Traditional art, I use it to check perspective, layout and anatomy before I start the drawing stage. I keep the DAZ render by my easel as I am drawing to make sure everything stays fairly accurate.
- For The Shadow War, I do my layouts in DAZ, then print them as line drawings to put on the lightbox before I start inking and painting.
- For Warmage, I do the complete panel in DAZ, before exporting to the next tool.
For 2D graphics, I use GIMP. Free. No subscription. Has a boatload of plugins, filters, brushes, and scripts, and it will use PS plugins, scripts and brushes with no problems. What more do I need? I do all of my 2D stuff in GIMP, using an old Bamboo tablet, and I love it. For Warmage, all of the panels go into GIMP, and get adjusted, layered, and altered until I have the look I want. For other things, I will do sketches and such in GIMP as often as I use pencil and paper these days.
And for comics. Comic Life 3. There is nothing better.
It does perfect panels. You can pick the final IRL paper size, and all of your pages will conform. You can drag and drop balloons, captions, and panels from your script directly onto the page and play with them. When balloons are resized or reshaped, all of the words inside them adjust to the new layout while you are doing it. Kerning, border spacing, and word splits adjust on the fly. You can set up templates for each character regarding font, size, balloon customised features, and anything else you want.
The panels autocrop your pictures, and you can shape the panels anyway you like. I can assemble and letter a page in under 15 minutes, and that includes placing the panels, importing the art, and placing the balloons. CL3 even lets you edit your pictures in another programme, then updates the picture version within CL3 with a single push of a button. No importing required.
I have a copy of MS5, and while it has some cool features, all in one place, I would rather switch programmes to get all of the features I need, than not have them.
Eagle
(Not on the MS5 wagon)
Can you get pressure sensitivity in Gimp? I've used gimp but it felt lacking, I just assumed I'm clueless on how to use it.
Manga Studio / Clip Studio Paint!
I had used Photoshop for almost a decade and just kept being sad when the features I was waiting for never came with new versions - until I discovered Manga Studio which has everything I ever wished for!
Perspective rules, awesome blending brushes (Photoshop's mix brush is a total failure TBH), multicolor brushes, brush sorting....
PLUS it can do most of the things I was used to in PS, like clipping layers, layer adjustments, modes...
The only thing PS still does better is handling text (in MS you can't even rotate text layers), and I still miss the brush preview from PS. So for the World of Wishes I do everything in Manga Studio, except text and backgrounds (for a reason hard to describe), which I do in Photoshop.
