Yes. Painter is very much aimed at art creation. It has about equal image-manipulation features as say, Paint Shop Pro does on Windows.
For what I do now, it's actually better, as I've wanted to try my hand at real digital art for a while. It's so far good and fast and stable. It runs on X, 9, and Windows, so it's compatible. It'll also open and save to illustrator files.
I likes it so far!