7 ms·

I do digital painting on the side, as a hobby. In that field, the iPad Pro, specifically the Procreate app, has been revolutionary -- every single famous digita

by koboll 7y ago

I do digital painting on the side, as a hobby. In that field, the iPad Pro, specifically the Procreate app, has been revolutionary -- every single famous digital illustrator, concept artist, and comics artist I follow on Instagram has one, and they post gorgeous work done on them regularly. It's the only tool that comes remotely close to challenging the gold standard workflow of Wacom tablet + Photoshop, and Wacom and Adobe have been feeling the heat, ratcheting up their marketing efforts to try and attract back budding young artists to their tools. On the other hand, the iPad can't seem to actually replace those tools. Those pro artists still use a Wacom for their professional corporate work. The problem is less the software, I think, than the limitations the software forces by nature of the hardware. For professional work, you need as big a screen as possible -- Wacoms go up to 32". You also need hotkeys for an efficient workflow. Hunting and tapping through menus on a touchscreen is, by nature, going to be slower then having your left hand ready to hit the undo command at a moment's notice. Sure, it might be possible to plug a big external screen and a full keyboard into your iPad, but at that point, is it really an iPad anymore? What professional artist would bother buying an iPad to act as a desktop computer tower when they could buy an actual desktop computer tower with better specs for cheaper? So the iPad is about as good as it can possibly be: such a good touchscreen tablet that professional artists love it in all situations where they're willing to sacrifice power and flexibility for the convenience of a fully portable touchscreen tablet. It's not very good at replacing a full professional art setup on a desktop. But should it really aspire to be? In other words, I agree with this article, but disagree with its conclusions. Tablets won't replace laptops not because the iPad isn't a good enough tablet, but because they're simply never going to be the most efficient work machine you can buy.

callmeed 7y ago
Would you mind sharing some of your favorite IG follows for illustration? I'm just getting into this on the iPad.
- koboll 7y ago
  Some favorites off the top of my feed: - karlkopinski - justingerardillustration - joel_chaim_holtzman - kienan_lafferty - thealexrossart - spudonkey - miles_art - etheringtonbrothers - monafinden - jesper_ejsing - evanefimov - deviantart (yes, they have an insta) - aaronmiller - tfiddlerart - superani.insta - julbenart - sparth - arielolivetti - mattdixonart - devburmak
mdorazio 7y ago
I'm curious why iPad Pro and not Surface, which from my (admittedly limited) use has always had digitizer responsiveness and functionality at the same level, with the benefit of also being a computer with all the normal software workflow and hotkeys.
- derefr 7y ago
  From what I recall of the blogosphere reaction when the iPad Pro first came out, I think it having a 120Hz refresh rate had a lot to do with it. Not sure if the Surface has since caught up, but the generation of the Surface out at the iPad Pro’s release wasn’t nearly as responsive-feeling.
- neighbour 7y ago
  Many digital artists I know had numerous problems with Surface products. Many shipped with severe backlight bleed and returning it for a new one didn't help because they all had the same issue.
- fatbird 7y ago
  I've tested both and, as of a few years ago, the Surface was still laggier than the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro. I bought the pro and a pencil just for digital drawing/painting, and any perceivable lag is a killer. I'd been waiting decades for something like this.
- hug 7y ago
  Late to the party, but the answer is almost certainly just ProCreate. ProCreate (according to my girlfriend, who has a degree in illustration) is absolutely second to none with regards to completely eliminating the friction from digital painting. The toolset & UI/UX feel like someone who had used Photoshop with a Wacom tablet for 10 years took everything they liked about interacting with Photoshop and got it right, and everything they hated about Photoshop and fixed it. The app itself is absurdly responsive on a 2018 iPad Pro. I don't know if you saw the Hobbit in the theatres when everyone was freaking out about the frame rate because it felt too fast? It's like that, but enjoyable. Every other app on my iPad seems sluggish in comparison, and I don't even know how. (And don't get me started with comparing it to Photoshop, even on a ridiculously beefy machine with a 144Hz display.)
derefr 7y ago
> Hunting and tapping through menus on a touchscreen is, by nature, going to be slower then having your left hand ready to hit the undo command at a moment's notice. I’ve seen DJs and other performance-artist using mixing software that actually spreads its control UX over several tablets. I wonder why no professional studio program has copied that? (I’m not suggesting you’d need to own, like, five iPad Pros. More like one iPad Pro to draw on, and then a pile of random $100 Android tablets each showing one palette window.) I think I did once see a demo where someone had a second iPad that acted entirely as an painter’s palette for the drawing on the primary iPad. And I mean “palette” literally: it was a canvas to smear and mix literal paint blobs around, with accurate optical results, which you could then sample with a brush tool, or take a cut of with a painting-knife tool.
- GuiA 7y ago
  Would love to see those demos if you can remember where you saw them!
hifumin 7y ago
The "cars vs trucks" metaphor from Steve Jobs still holds up.
mechhacker 7y ago
As a drawing hobbyist, this is the main reason I got an iPad. It's incredible to draw on and experiment with. Another killer app for me is Nebo. The text recognition and UI is very good. I use it for regular, cursive writing and conversion to text. It's the least in-my-way handwriting recognition that I've used. I've played around with it in French and Czech as well, and it recognized the language and accent differences even though my handwriting is quite poor. It will also recognize and solve some handwritten math problems and simple diagrams. I originally tried this back when PDAs were a thing, but that form factor and capability a decade and a half ago was awful. I just wish it had something like windows subsystem for Linux so that I could do some programming in my normal environment as well, then I would pick up a decent keyboard cover and leave my laptops at home.

by koboll 7y ago

callmeed 7y ago

Would you mind sharing some of your favorite IG follows for illustration? I'm just getting into this on the iPad.

koboll 7y ago
Some favorites off the top of my feed: - karlkopinski - justingerardillustration - joel_chaim_holtzman - kienan_lafferty - thealexrossart - spudonkey - miles_art - etheringtonbrothers - monafinden - jesper_ejsing - evanefimov - deviantart (yes, they have an insta) - aaronmiller - tfiddlerart - superani.insta - julbenart - sparth - arielolivetti - mattdixonart - devburmak

mdorazio 7y ago

I'm curious why iPad Pro and not Surface, which from my (admittedly limited) use has always had digitizer responsiveness and functionality at the same level, with the benefit of also being a computer with all the normal software workflow and hotkeys.

derefr 7y ago
From what I recall of the blogosphere reaction when the iPad Pro first came out, I think it having a 120Hz refresh rate had a lot to do with it. Not sure if the Surface has since caught up, but the generation of the Surface out at the iPad Pro’s release wasn’t nearly as responsive-feeling.
neighbour 7y ago
Many digital artists I know had numerous problems with Surface products. Many shipped with severe backlight bleed and returning it for a new one didn't help because they all had the same issue.
fatbird 7y ago
I've tested both and, as of a few years ago, the Surface was still laggier than the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro. I bought the pro and a pencil just for digital drawing/painting, and any perceivable lag is a killer. I'd been waiting decades for something like this.
hug 7y ago
Late to the party, but the answer is almost certainly just ProCreate. ProCreate (according to my girlfriend, who has a degree in illustration) is absolutely second to none with regards to completely eliminating the friction from digital painting. The toolset & UI/UX feel like someone who had used Photoshop with a Wacom tablet for 10 years took everything they liked about interacting with Photoshop and got it right, and everything they hated about Photoshop and fixed it. The app itself is absurdly responsive on a 2018 iPad Pro. I don't know if you saw the Hobbit in the theatres when everyone was freaking out about the frame rate because it felt too fast? It's like that, but enjoyable. Every other app on my iPad seems sluggish in comparison, and I don't even know how. (And don't get me started with comparing it to Photoshop, even on a ridiculously beefy machine with a 144Hz display.)

derefr 7y ago

> Hunting and tapping through menus on a touchscreen is, by nature, going to be slower then having your left hand ready to hit the undo command at a moment's notice. I’ve seen DJs and other performance-artist using mixing software that actually spreads its control UX over several tablets. I wonder why no professional studio program has copied that? (I’m not suggesting you’d need to own, like, five iPad Pros. More like one iPad Pro to draw on, and then a pile of random $100 Android tablets each showing one palette window.) I think I did once see a demo where someone had a second iPad that acted entirely as an painter’s palette for the drawing on the primary iPad. And I mean “palette” literally: it was a canvas to smear and mix literal paint blobs around, with accurate optical results, which you could then sample with a brush tool, or take a cut of with a painting-knife tool.

GuiA 7y ago
Would love to see those demos if you can remember where you saw them!

hifumin 7y ago

The "cars vs trucks" metaphor from Steve Jobs still holds up.

mechhacker 7y ago

As a drawing hobbyist, this is the main reason I got an iPad. It's incredible to draw on and experiment with. Another killer app for me is Nebo. The text recognition and UI is very good. I use it for regular, cursive writing and conversion to text. It's the least in-my-way handwriting recognition that I've used. I've played around with it in French and Czech as well, and it recognized the language and accent differences even though my handwriting is quite poor. It will also recognize and solve some handwritten math problems and simple diagrams. I originally tried this back when PDAs were a thing, but that form factor and capability a decade and a half ago was awful. I just wish it had something like windows subsystem for Linux so that I could do some programming in my normal environment as well, then I would pick up a decent keyboard cover and leave my laptops at home.