When you have a tablet like the iPad that supports the Apple Pencil, one of the many uses that take advantage of this great combination is to get creative with the best drawing apps for iPad. After all, what beats a digital sketchbook where you don’t even need to spend money for the right tools, which eventually run out of ink, and then you need to replenish your supply?
Regardless of whether you’re an amateur or a pro, these are the best drawing apps for iPad that’ll let you unleash your creativity effortlessly.
Procreate
With Procreate, you’re getting access to exclusive tools, such as the dual-texture brushes and immediately responsive smudging tools to create the perfect masterpiece. And if you can’t find a tool in Procreate to fit your needs, you can just create your own tools. Procreate also has incredibly high-resolution canvases that allow you to print out your work in massive sizes, without ever skipping a beat. All of your work in Procreate can come out as PSD, native .procreate, TIFF, transparent PNG, multi-page PDF, or even web-ready JPEG file formats. Procreate also supports time-lapse replays, so you can send it directly to your favorite streaming service.
Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer is designed to take advantage of Metal, so it’ll give you blazing fast performance. When you pan the canvas or zoom in or out, everything is at a smooth 120fps, which is amazing. It also works flawlessly with the Apple Pencil, taking advantage of pressure, tilt, and angle sensitivity. You’ll also have the best pen, pencil, corner, curve editing, geometry operations, and smart shape tools available at your disposal, and the Apple Pencil means incredible accuracy.
If you need to deal with vector graphics for marketing materials, websites, icons, UI design, or concept art, then Affinity Designer is a must-have.
Adobe Illustrator Draw
n Adobe Illustrator Draw, you have customizable brushes that you can use for drawing, designing, and stylizing. There are even a ton of basic shape stencils for your perfect circles, squares, French curves, polygons, and speech bubbles for epic comics. Adobe even allows you to mix photos in with your vector drawings, which can result in some amazing effects. All of the canvases in Adobe Illustrator Draw can go up to 8K resolution, meaning you can get large prints of your work as well, in case you want to show it off.
Adobe Photoshop Sketch
In Adobe Photoshop Sketch, you’ll have access to 24 built-in brushes, all of them with adjustable sizes, colors, opacity, and blending settings. And if you can’t find the right tool for the job, you can import Photoshop brushes directly into Sketch as well, so the possibilities are truly limitless. Like Draw, you can mix photos into your drawing layers, and there are stencils to help you create perfect curves and basic shapes. Sketch also goes up to 8K resolution, so your work can be printed out on massive prints if need be.
Adobe Fresco: Sketch & Draw
With Adobe Fresco, you get a combination of user-favorite Photoshop brushes as well as vector brushes, along with the new Live Brushes, all of these are meant to help you express yourself however you see fit. There are also essential tools for illustrators, selection, and masking tools, and the UI is flexible to work with your needs, not the other way around. While you can use Adobe Fresco for free, there are some premium features that come with a paid Creative Cloud account.
