[Bloggers note: Sorry folks, this was lost thanks to a bug in WordPress for the iPhone removing my published post and substituting a very incomplete draft. I’ve reconstructed some of it however it’s sorely lacking. I’ll try to fix it better later, just wanted to get most of it up asap.]
I decided that I’d launch one of the few paint programs I have for the device. Lo and behold within minutes I was lost in a world of technicolor hues and pixel-pushing goodness. I’m speaking of painting programs on the iPhone and I thought I’d write a few words here about each of them.
Release: 27 August 2008
Current Version: 2.0 (5 updates)
Released about a year ago, brushes claims to be a natural media painting application so when I first started it I was hoping for as close to a “Painter” app as could be done on the iPhone. What I got was pretty damn amazing. I find working with Brushes to be a real flow experience. The menu disappear as soon as you start brushing the canvas with your finger. To get the menu back simply tap the screen. Pressing and holding within the canvas for as second will bring up the eyedropper tool, pick up a colour and start painting again.
The application supports up to four layers and you can export your drawings (via web browser pointing to the broadcasting Brushes app) as PNG or Brushes file type. You’ve also got tons and tons of undo available.
The limitations in this software are a distinct lack of brushes, it has 3 of any size. This is a bit of a surprise given the app’s name. The drawings are limited to the iPhone’s native screen size but that is almost to be expected…but wait several of these apps work with much larger canvases. Read on.
Released: 20 July 2009
Current Version: 1.2 (2 updates)
Layers is another entry into the ‘real’ painting genre on the iPhone. It was released on the 20th of July of this year. Layers, as its name implies, supports layers–up to five per painting. You’ve got quite a lot of flexibility with the layers too. You can merge layers down, duplicate layers and rotate layers by 90 degrees. When creating layers you can automatically populate them with a photo or fill.
Layers does have the nifty ability to send your painting through email as a Photoshop document with layers intact. Layers also builds documents at a nice 512×512 resolution, a bit higher than Brushes 320×480. The menu in Layers hides when painting but it reappears after any pause in the work. One can also bring the menu back by shaking the iPhone.
Layers encourages a bit more of a flow experience than Brushes. There were more pauses when I waited for the menus to reappear when working in Layers but I found that they weren’t so long as to be annoying and actually gave me a bit of breathing space between my transitions between colours or brushes. The one thing about Layers that truly contributes to the flow experience is that the brush selector and the colour selector are on the same screen. I can press either of those tools and get to whatever I want whilst painting. I found myself using Layers more than Brushes for this reason.
Speaking of brushes, Layers does have a good selection of them. In addition they are labelled “Default Brushes” leading me to believe there are more on the way. The user has full control over brush sizing of each of them as well.
Released: 24 September 2008
Current Version: 1.2 (2 updates)
Colors is a rather simple painting program that makes no pretence at simulating natural media. It does have a couple of features that make it stand out from both Brushes and Layers. One of them is that you can simulate pressure sensitivity by tilting the iPhone as you draw a stroke. This does take some getting used to and it seems a bit finicky but is a fine idea on paper.
The other feature that is kind of neat about Colors is that you can offset the stroke from the location of your finger. This allows you to see what you are painting and it works surprisingly well. I wish that Brushes and Layers had this functionality as well.
The selection of brushes you have in the program is basic, nowhere near the quality of brushes in Brushes or Layers. The program allows you to upload your renditions to their online gallery, you can also browse the gallery from within the app. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to import anything from your camera or other painting app into Color.
Finally, you can export your images via mail or to your photo library in positively huge (for iPhone images) sizes. Up to 1280×1760. Unfortunately I saw no way to zoom that closely into an image whist working on it but the program apparently is working with a bitmap that large in the background.
Doodle Buddy is a very straightforward drawing app that goes as far as simulating chalk. It even has smearing capability which is a function I wished for in both Layers and Brushes. Unfortunately that is as far as the ‘art’ element of Doodle Buddy goes. It’s primary strength is its ability to share a screen between two devices (iPhones/iPod Touches) over wifi.
It’s ability to share screens over wifi allows for some fun games and the app includes several game ‘templates’ including hangman, tick tack toe, and a few other games. My girlfriend and I played a pictionary-like game on it and had a great time. The app did crash a few times and there were some other minor issues but all in all being able to share screens can be loads of fun.
You can save your Doodle Buddy images to the Photo Album and you can also import from the same. Since Doodle Buddy is the only app that allows smearing (a technique I love with the finger touch of iPhone painting) it is a good tool for this one purpose. The pictures that Doodle Buddy works with are 580×800.
That’s Doodle Buddy in a nutshell. A smear tool 🙂
Released: 06 January 2009
Current Version: 1.0 (0 Updates)
iShodo is a Japanese calligraphy app that simulates not only the style of the art but also several of the materials as well. The canvas is simply the paper on which you paint uncluttered by menus. To bring up the brush selection, one simply taps the left side of the screen. To open the ink and water wells one taps on the right side. The top edge of the screen opens a menu with the app’s options.
iShodo gives the user a selection of three brushes and one colour: black. One can save a painting to the camera roll or send it to Twitter.
The program does what it is meant to do very well but offers no frills. Still I have one minor complaint about it: it would be nice to have the selected brush hilighted both when choosing one and when returning to the brush selection menu. This is a small issue thouh and I’d recommend the app to anyone interested in the medium.
Type Drawing is another specialist painting program. like the other tools we’ve seen, one paints pictures on a work area. Unlike the other tools, one paints in Type Drawing with text.
Before drawing with Type Drawing the user defines a string of text to paint with and the typeface to use. One also has control over the paper colour.
TypeDrawing does something rather interesting with simulated pressure sensitivity. the speed at which you draw determines the thickness of the stroke; go slow and you draw a thin stroke, faster and the stroke gets thicker.
TypeDrawing does what it does very effectively.
SketchBook Mobile is a brand new entry in the painting app realm and for a first version it has a nice selection of features under its bonnet. Offset painting, decent resolution, a wide selection of brushes, mirror painting, export to photo library and email.
For a first version it’s fairly robust and I’m anxious to see where this one heads.
NetSketch is another collaborative painting app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s a vector based painting program with a nearly infinite sized canvas on which to paint. It doesn’t have any of the standard vector based things you might expect (select a stroke, resize/rotate a stroke, etc…) but you can zoom in as close as you like without seeing pixels.
Sorry for cutting this short but I lost my previous entry thanks to a ‘bug’ in WordPress for the iPhone overwriting a published entry so I’ve had to go through and reconstruct much of this article. I’ll add more as time permits.
I’ve found that I use Layers and ZeptoPad more than any of these other apps and will post a link to my ZeptoPad review here.
User Interface Explorations 