This weekend I went out into nature, visited an amazing natural hot springs, and did some nature sketching. These days I mostly sketch on my iPad and I’ve been using primarily a few basic drawing apps. I switch between Adobe Sketch and Paper by 53. The neat thing is that the companies keep improving the iPad drawing apps–and the stylus features. Last year it seemed like a push for more social interaction with including drawing community sharing features. What will be the big thing this year? Will it be all on one apps or mobile app workflows?
There are differences between the two of my favorite apps; Adobe Sketch and Paper by 53. One of the main differences, for me, is the use of layers. In Adobe Sketch you can place a photo as your bottom layer and draw on top of it. It’s a nice feature and gives a fun collage feel to the images. (see top featured image, right side) In Adobe Sketch they group images in project sets of 5. You can publish these directly to Behance–an online portfolio site with social networking features. Of corse the Adobe people have integrated a fun series of mobile apps to play with, including custom brushes and color sets etc., that integrate with the desktop applications too. They seem to be moving into the multi app mobile workflow concept.
Paper by 53 has not added the photo or layer feature yet to their app. However, paper by 53 works great with their custom blue tooth Pencil. Recently they updated their a neat magnifying zoom feature to be even better. This zooming feature, I think, allows the sketches to have a wider range of line quality and makes for a more textured looking digital image. (see featured image, left side, above.) Another really fun perk to this app is that they will print and ship your sketchbooks to you! You can have as many pages in a sketchbook as you like–and as many sketchbooks as you like. I’m thinking it’s time for me to print and archive a few of my Paper books. They also added sharing with the Mix feature last year. They recently announced a new set of tools for this app called Think Kit. It’s for diagram like stuff (shapes etc.) and I can’t wait to play with it! They are doing a great job of limiting features but creating an all in one integrated feel to their mobile creative process.
Got my first 53 book this week…great presentation…helpful support…fun.