Sketchbook Mobile Demo & Review

Welcome to the second tip of the hat app review. Today we're looking at Sketch Book Mobile for the ipod touch and iphone.This is an app I've used daily since I got it about a year and a bit ago and I love it, I'm a fan of drawing via digital means in any context but this app would have to be my favourite, (even prefered), way of doing that.

It does take a while to get used to drawing with your finger but once you do it's almost like second nature, like riding a bike so to speak. What this app offers up to you is basically the equivalent of what Adobe offers you in the way of drawing tools in Photoshop, which is crazy, but great.
There's a colour picker, (just hold your finger down over a colour for a bit and the colour picker activates), a colour wheel, (which is super easy to use, very similiar to the one in Corel Painter if you've ever used that), colour swatches, opacity and brush size adjuster,the ability to zoom to 2500% for insane levels of detail,3 pages of different brushes which imitate real life brushes, pens, pencils etc...,a paint bucket, some patterned brushes and a smudge brush, (gotta love a bit of smudging).There's an auto circle/oval drawing tool and a square/rectangle drawing tool, a line tool, the ability to add text to an image, twelve layers to work with, (with the ability to change their opacity and also to merge selected layers so you can have many more than twelve), and an eraser and 10 undo/redo's available to you so your mistakes are not a big deal even if you made them a little while ago,(you can also adjust the opacity of the eraser for interesting effects like creating sections of a drawing that are slightly transparent and layering things underneath).

All of these tools are accessed from a wheel which is bought up by touching a very unobtrusive little wheel symbol at the bottom of the screen so nothing gets in the way of your drawing when you've picked what you want to use. The resulting images once exported, (to the iCloud, to your photo library, to iTunes as a layered photo shop file or PNG, Flickr, Facebook, Dropbox, posted to your Twitter account, to an email adress again as a layered PSD file, or even a PDF, or even wirelessly to a printer if your printer can do that),are suprisingly high res, you can print them on an A4 page and they look super swish.So much so that I use mine on T-shirts printed nice and big, and sell them here;http://cattrainfeetbrain.wordans.com.au/my/boutique.

I've tried alot of other drawing apps, and some are alright, but none are as great as this, aside from possibly Adobe Ideas, which came out later than Sketchbook, and only has 10 layers, which you have to pay an extra dollar for the privelege of using, (ontop of the $7 you paid because of the Adobe name, as opposed to the $2 you pay for Sketchbook, or the no dollars you pay for the slightly less comprehensive free version. Adobe ideas is also vector based too, it's a whole other kettle of fish, a good one, but completely different).
I find that other drawing apps do alot of the work for you, with fake effects added to what you're drawing without your say or control, either that or they just drop the ball when it comes to clarity and options, but Sketchbook hits the nail on the head, what you draw is yours, with complete control and clarity that's a little miraculous considering you're drawing on a tiny screen.

I can't recommend Sketchbook enough, Autodesk are the people behind AUTOCAD, that mystical 3D program that architects know how to use.It doesn't make sense that the skills needed to make that super serious software are transferable to this very much more user friendly, almost earthy is the word I want to use, but not exactly, piece of portable software, but apparently they do, it has to be seen to be believed.
Use the button below to have a look at Sketchbook on iTunes, you won't regret it.