Clip Studio Paint offers a Shading Assist feature that automatically generates shadow and highlight layers on an illustration based on the user-specified position of a light source. The artist sets up their line art and flat color layers, positions a light source manipulator on the canvas, and the tool produces shading layers above the artwork.

Shading Assist was added in Clip Studio Paint Ver. 2.0 in March 2023. It generates two types of shading — smooth shading (with blended transitions) and cel shading (with sharp borders) — based on the color and lineart layers provided by the user. The feature creates shadow and highlight layers on top of the user's existing color layers, which can be adjusted with parameters for intensity, spread, and number of shadow levels. Unlike the Colorize, Pose Scanner, and Remove Tones tools, Shading Assist is documented under 'Smart Tools' in the user guide and does not appear to require an internet connection or server upload.