Overview
Fresco exists for a specific piece of hardware: a screen you draw directly on with a pen. Everything about it assumes that, from the radial menu that sits under your off hand to the way panels collapse out of the way while a stroke is in progress. On a machine with only a mouse it is the wrong program, and it makes no attempt to hide that.
What it offers that other drawing applications do not is live media. The oil and watercolour brushes do not simulate wet paint with a texture stamp, they run a fluid simulation where pigment spreads into wet areas, colours mix on the canvas, and a stroke keeps developing after your hand stops. Alongside that sit ordinary raster brushes and true vector brushes, all usable in the same document on different layers.
Live brushes
Watercolour brushes deposit pigment that bleeds into the wet paper around it, pools at the edges of a stroke, and dries over a few seconds unless you keep working into it. Wet on wet blends two colours where they meet, and a stroke laid onto dry paper behaves completely differently from the same stroke onto wet. Drying can be forced when you want to layer without bleeding.
Oil brushes carry a loaded amount of paint that depletes across a stroke, pick up colour from what is already on the canvas, and leave visible bristle and impasto texture that catches light. Palette mixing happens on the canvas itself rather than in a separate colour picker. Both families run on the graphics card and are the reason the requirements list a real card.
Raster, vector and layers
Raster brushes are the standard family, including the imported brush sets from the same company's other applications, with full pressure, tilt and velocity response. Vector brushes draw resolution independent strokes that stay sharp at any zoom, which is how lettering and clean line art get done in the same file as painted areas.
Layers support groups, clipping masks, blend modes and per layer opacity, with a live brush layer kept separate so its simulation stays editable. Selections work by shape, lasso or automatic subject detection, and a selection can be turned into a mask that constrains every subsequent stroke.
Animation, symmetry and getting work out
A frame based animation timeline supports onion skinning across several frames forward and back, with looping playback and per frame timing. It is a light tool rather than a full animation package, aimed at short loops and rough motion tests rather than production sequences.
Drawing aids include symmetry with several axis configurations, perspective guides with one, two and three vanishing points, and shape assistance that snaps a rough stroke to a clean geometric form. Export covers layered documents that open in the desktop editors with layers intact, flat images at any resolution, and a time lapse recording of the whole session.
What you get
- Live watercolour brushes with pigment bleed, pooling and drying
- Live oil brushes with paint depletion, canvas pickup and impasto texture
- Full raster brush family with pressure, tilt and velocity response
- True vector brushes that stay sharp at any zoom in the same document
- Layers with groups, clipping masks and blend modes
- Automatic subject selection convertible to a constraining mask
- Frame based animation timeline with multi frame onion skinning
- Symmetry, perspective guides and shape snapping aids
- Export as layered documents, flat images or a session time lapse
Inside the archive
- Fresco installer, offline
- Complete live, raster and vector brush libraries
- Paper and canvas texture set
- Language packs for the interface list shown above
- Install notes covering pen device configuration
System requirements
| Operating system | Windows 10 version 22H2 or Windows 11, 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Processor | Quad core, 2 GHz or faster |
| Memory | 8 GB minimum, 16 GB for large canvases |
| Graphics | 4 GB VRAM, required for the live brush simulation |
| Storage | 4 GB free |
| Input | A pressure sensitive pen device, ideally a direct drawing display |
Installing it
- Confirm you have a pressure sensitive pen device. Without one this is the wrong application.
- Unpack the archive and disable real time protection for the install.
- Install the pen device driver before running setup if you have not already.
- Run setup and launch once. There should be no sign-in prompt or trial banner.
- Test a watercolour stroke. If it does not bleed, the graphics acceleration is not active.
Mirrors
| Route | Region | Note | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct, primary | Europe | No wait, resumable | Online |
| Direct, secondary | North America | No wait, resumable | Online |
| Torrent magnet | Global | Direct is usually faster at this size | Online |
Release history
- Watercolour drying behaviour reworked for more predictable layering
- Vector brush performance improved on very long strokes
- Fixed pen pressure curve resetting between sessions on some devices
- Animation timeline onion skinning extended to more frames
- Oil brush canvas pickup made adjustable per brush
- Perspective guides added with three point support
Questions about this release
Can I use it with a mouse?
Technically yes and practically no. Everything about the program assumes pressure and tilt, and the live brushes in particular are meaningless without them.
Do the live brushes need a good graphics card?
Yes. The simulation runs on the card and falls back to something very slow without one. If watercolour does not bleed, acceleration is not working.
Do files open in the desktop editors?
Yes, with layers intact, including live brush layers flattened into raster layers on the way across.
Is the animation timeline a full animation tool?
No. It handles short loops and motion tests. Anything longer belongs in a dedicated animation application.
Comments
Vector and raster in the same document means lettering over painted backgrounds without leaving the app.
Needs a real pen display to make sense. On a tablet monitor it is excellent.
Comments are read before they appear. If a build stops working, say so here and it gets rebuilt rather than quietly left up.
The watercolour is not a texture trick, it genuinely spreads and dries. Nothing else does this on this platform.