Creative software
Griffin
Crayola ColorStudio HD
Free
Homepage: www.griffintechnology.com
System requirements (OS 3.2 or later; 73.4MB
available memory)
Griffin's Crayola CoforStudio HD iPad
app allows your children to create and add color to endless pictures. The app
itself is free, but for £24.99 you can purchase an iMarker, a digital stylus
that can be used instead of your finger. This is comfortable to use, but offers
little more precision than your fingertip.
The app has three modes: Makes
coloring page, Coloring pages and Free draw. It also offers six categories of
coloring pages, as well as five pen types: brush, pencil, marker pen, wax
crayon and felt-tip. Each pen creates much the same stroke texture, but the
choice of colors available varies.
To make a coloring page you drag in
backgrounds, as well as clip art, text bubbles, visual effects and songs. The
clip art is resizable and can be rotated or flipped, brought to the front of
the image or deleted. Once a page is finished, it can be saved and then drawn
on in the Coloring pages option.
Free draw mode is in essence a blank
piece of paper. You can use whichever pens and colors you like. Once finished,
young kids will love the fact that some of the picture elements become
animated.
Settings let you choose between a
tap-to-fill function for speedy effects, a no-overwrite option where colors
don't exceed the delineated area, and freehand coloring in which colors are
laid down just as your pen dictates. Color mixing isn't possible, but the app
includes a large number of pens, several stroke weights and a range of
textures.
Verdict
This is a great app that will keep
youngsters busy for hours on end. However, we found the stylus unnecessary and
its cost too high.
Autodesk
Sketchbook Pro
Price: $5
Homepage: www.Autodesk.com
System requirements
iOS 4.0/Android 3.0 or later; 14MB
available memory
If you ever wanted to ditch the old
pen and paper, and use your tablet to draw, sketch or create complex
multi-layered collages, Sketchbook Pro is the app to use. The interface is very
slick, but hidden behind its clean white canvas is an abundance of features to
satisfy even the most demanding artist.
At first, you're presented with a tiny
doughnut-shaped button to access menu items, but this can easily be changed in
the Settings menu. There's also a clever shortcut panel to allow quick access
to your drawing tools. Pens, brushes, fill and erase tools are displayed in the
middle of the screen around a circle. To adjust the brush size and opacity,
hold down the middle of the panel and drag up/down or side to side.
What sets this app apart from the
competition is its support for multiple layers, each of which is transparent.
This means you're able to move them in front or behind the previous layer,
without obscuring the layer below. We were also impressed with its ability to
shuffle them in any order, and to adjust opacity and apply blending modes to
each individual layer.
Importing and resizing images is a
breeze, but accurate transformations are less easy to achieve. Another poor
element is text handling: fonts are immediately rasterized and no longer
editable.
However, other visual elements are
preserved as editable layers and PNG support lets you save them as such. Saving
as a Jpeg image flattens an image once and for all.
Verdict
While we found the actual drawing
process cumbersome in Sketchbook Pro, it's still great for on-the-go drawing
and far superior to many equivalent apps we've tried.
Drawing
Pad
Price: $2.0
Homepage: drawingpadapp.com
System requirements
iOS 3,2/Android 2.2 or later: 22MB available
memory
Drawing Pad falls somewhere between
the sophistication of Sketchbook Pro and the simplicity of the Griffin Crayola
app. It's about freehand drawing rather than coloring in, but has a number of
scalable 'sticker' designs and a selection of virtual paper backgrounds that
you can use.
The stickers make good use of the
pinch to zoom - it's easy to pull, stretch and rotate them. Dozens are
included, so you can build up a picture. You can also select various decorative
elements such as stars and bubbles, and create streams of them. We were pleased
with some of the results, given the unpromising interface with which we were presented
when launching this app.
As with Crayola's ColorStudio app, you
get a selection of pens, highlighters and pencils with which to draw freehand.
There are around 50 shades on offer when using a pencil, felt-tip pen or
crayon; more if you use a paintbrush since, unlike the other implements, you also
get to choose one of four brush sizes. Manipulation by weight and pressure of
touch isn't supported, but there are three eraser size options.
Once you've finished, iPad users can
save their creation to iPhoto, Android owners can export it to their Android
Gallery, and both can save it to the Album within Drawing Pad itself. It's also
possible to share your artwork on Picasa or over Bluetooth, Gmail or another
email client, as well as to save it to SD Card. Press the USB thumb drive icon
to save and bring up the Share menu. Choosing an option brings up your contacts
list and instantly shares or sends it.
Verdict
Text support and layer preservation
are both missing, but there's plenty of scope for getting creative with this
app.
Adobe
Photoshop Touch
Price: $11
Homepage: adobe.com
System requirements
Android 3.1 or later; 36MB available
memory
Photoshop Touch brings many of the
editing program's most popular features to Android tablets, and offers many
popular Photoshop tools, filters and effects for a touchscreen format. The app
also connects to Adobe's Creative Cloud, so you can move your work back and forth
between a tablet and a PC.
The interface is located around both
the edges and top of the screen, and includes selection toots, adjustments,
effects and other miscellaneous items. The icons and menus are large and
finger-friendly, and double-tapping a layer will take you into a 3D view of all
the layers in the current project.
The selection tools are limited by the
accuracy of the tip of your finger, unless you happen to have the Lenovo
ThinkPad, which has an active digitizer. Working with selection tools takes
some getting used to, but we were able to replace a colleague's head with a
cow's in just a few minutes.
Drawing or painting backgrounds with
your fingertip isn't always ideal: a stylus would be useful. Manipulating
images using two fingers to pinch and zoom, or pan around is more effective,
with just a hint of lag.
The app uses a new file type called
PSDX, which can be imported into Adobe CS5 with a plug-in. PSDX files are
limited to 1600x1600 pixels and 16 layers. Text is rasterized once you finish adding
it, so it can be deleted - but not edited - afterwards. Effects don't remain live
and, while they can be undone, they can't be changed.
Verdict
Overall, we were impressed with Adobe
Photoshop Touch. It provides a wide array of useful and easy-to- use tools for
manipulating images on the go.
