Top five Android art apps... Start here.
Categories: artwork
Tags: Nomad Brush, Dagi, Didlr, Lets Hudl, Samsung Galaxy S4, Sketchbook Pro, Android art app, Photoshop Touch, PhotoViva, S-Note
Date: 10 November 2013 15:10:26
The start here is a note to me, more than to you, dear reader. I've been meaning to find the time to update the Buyers Guide post I did at Christmas and have been utterly snowballed with work and... well, all sorts really - especially as the year comes to a close.
But, since buying some Hudl tablets to do art classes with I've been re-evaluating my relationship with Android and have been on a search for the art apps that I can enjoy working with and teaching to others. There's a longer post than this to come but here's a top five of the apps I sit and draw in. I've arranged them (a little) in order of complexity.
S-Note: Yes. I know. It's not really an art app, nor is it available across the Android range. But it's smooth and quick and, on larger devices, keeps a process recording of what you've drawn. I like it a lot and, on the S4, is one of my most chosen go-to apps. I thoroughly enjoyed using the app on the Note 2 and 10.1s I used last year.
Didlr app: available cross platform (oh how lovely that is to be able to say) Didlr is free and lovely to use. It has a limited colour palette but remembers the animation as a matter of course and allows you to share both the image created and the animation through a range of social media outlets. It's a thoroughly enjoyable app to work with.
PhotoViva: a photo editing app at heart it has a playful and interesting drawing engine hidden away from plain view. Ostensibly there to add a hand drawn painterly effect to a photo importing a blank image will allow you to paint on top with a brush that rotates as you go or has a scatter effect built in, or a jitter on the hue and saturation values or... well... you get the jist.
Photoshop Touch: So we get to the big boys... Adobe have a long and cherished history when it comes to art apps and Photoshop is so synonymous with digital art it has become the defining verb. So it's no surprise to see it on the list is it?
Well, actually, yes it is. I've got a HUGE amount of love for Adobe and Photoshop 3.3 LE was a pivotal moment for me in art software use. But Photoshop Touch is still 'getting there' as an app rather than where it needs to be. The UI is very good, although the first screen you will see (after the loading screen) is a whole lot of clumsy. Sharing is also a bit quirky. Creative Cloud is great but not fully and completely integrated and the load time and occasional render time if you're using a large brush at half opacity...? Well... The range of options is also, on the drawing side, a bit lacking (although to be fair the same criticism could be levelled at Didlr and PhotoViva) but the editing and photo manipulation tools are very sound.
But it is good and well worth the money. It's funny how app store economies have skewed application prices - programmers and artists still need to be paid to develop - and Photoshop Touch is pricey for a mobile art package... but not at all when you consider the desktop prices. Maybe this is why it's so infrequently updated? Regardless - I've got a lot of love for Photoshop Touch but often think more about what it could be rather than what it is.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro: While Photoshop 3.3 LE was a huge eye opener for me in what an art app could be Autodesk provided one of the first art packages that I fell in love with. While D-Paint on the Amiga was 'the first' Ani Pro was probably my favourite 2d animation app of all time. Sigh. Those were, very much, the days. I still remember paying 'HOW MUCH?' for a 486 SX with 512 m of ram (I think) to work with Ani Pro at home.
OK, back on subject. Eagle eyed readers will know that I have had a love/hate relationship with the app in the past. The UI takes a bit of getting used to and, even though I know my way around it now, I wouldn't say I like it. The brush opacity seems bilked to the point of uselessness. The brushes are great but I truly have no idea how to associate them to UI slots nor the secret sauce of being able to swap between two brushes even though there is a button which says it will do this magically useful thing (on some devices anyway). SImilarly - some brushes will scale very large and others will not, but there's no warning about which is which and often you have to rely on memory to remember the effect each brush type will have and whether it will be a fine or wide ended splash on the screen.
BUT - and it took me a while - it's a fab app. On iOS there's a process video recording tool which I hope makes it over the Android side of the fence sometime and the toolset of brushes and variables is very cool. It also works very well with pressure sensitive styli. I LOVE the symmetry paint - which I seem to remember them being the first to implement - and some of the brushes are quirky and brilliant. There's no real level of cohesion between the multi-platform nature of the app but, on Android, it's probably my favourite go-to 'proper' art and design choice.
So there you have it: Android art apps in a nutshell. I'll get onto an updated styli and iOS art apps list soon but this'll have to do for the mo'. Masses of work paperwork to stop being avoided ;)
(Cheers: Didlr, Hudl, Nomad and Dagi styli, O'Hara white label stout).