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I've been pretty happy with my Samsung Galaxy S3 with S-Pen as a cheapo alternative to a Wacom. Many people also swear by the iPad / Apple pencil combo, though

I've been pretty happy with my Samsung Galaxy S3 with S-Pen as a cheapo alternative to a Wacom. Many people also swear by the iPad / Apple pencil combo, though that's a step up in price. I've had a few of the non-screen Wacoms in the past, but could never get on with the 'drawing down there -- appearing up there' disconnect between tablet and computer screen, so I cot rid of them and adopted the Android tablet + stylus approach. The advantages of using a tablet: 1: Small, portable, self-contained. The Wacom / Huion types need connected through a computer. 2: Some surprisingly good full-featured software available for ridiculously low prices [or free] 3: The Samsung Galaxy S-pen has 1024 pressure levels --just like the Wacom pens. So it's actually a very sensitive drawing instrument. The disadvantages of using a tablet: 1: Small screen size. It can often feel pretty cramped on there. Good graphics apps will allow you to hide all the interface panels and menus, so you're using all the screen to draw. But a lot of the time, I'm having to zoom in and work on an image in sections. 2: Plenty of good bitmap image manipulation and drawing apps about, but I still can't find an Android vector drawing app I like. 3: Can be bit more of a faff passing files around between apps on Android than it is on desktop. Though, unlike iOS, at least Android does allow filesystem access, so you can manage it, with a bit of juggling [and using Google Drive as your save destination helps a lot].

gtirloni 6y ago
I just got myself a Galaxy tablet and I was wondering about drawing apps. Nothing fancy, just to spend time away from coding. Do you have any recommendations?
- Normille 6y ago
  You've come to the right person. I must have tried them all in my time. Here's a few that have stuck around: Ibis Paint [0] -- [Free and paid versions]. Ignore the puke-making cutesy Manga gallery that greets you when you fire it up. It's actually a really full featured drawing app with layers / filters / masking / PSD export, etc. This is the one I use most Autodesk Sketchbook [1] --[Free] Similarly full featured to Ibis Paint, but slightly less so. Text handling tools not as good. I used to use this a lot before I discovered Ibis Paint Infinite Design [2] --[Free and paid] The most full featured Vector Drawing app I've found. There's a lot in there but it can be a bit clunky to use and theres a bit of lag when drawing, which puts me off using it much. Concepts [3] --[Free and paid]. A real mixed bag this one. I find the pen tool one of the nicest and most expressive to draw with of any app I've tried. And the infinite canvas is good for just doodling and 'seeing where it takes you'. Unfortunately, it's one of those apps where the designers have thrown usability guidelines out the window, to come up with an 'innovative' interface, which I personally find really annoying to use. It also gets a lot of flak for the slow pace of development on Android. The developers have been promising feature parity with the iOS version [which is apparently much better] for years now, but it never seems to arrive. Photo Editor [4] -- [Free and paid] This is as close to a mini Photoshop as you can get on Android] as in an app for manipulating existing images, rather than drawing per se. The interface is a bit menu heavy and unintuitive at times. But there's a lot in there, if you do a bit of digging. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.ibis.ibispaintx.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.ibis.ibi... [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adsk.sketchbook https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adsk.sketc... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brakefield.idfree https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brakefield... [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tophatch.concepts https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tophatch.c... [4] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iudesk.android.photo.editor https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iudesk.and... I've got a load of other graphic and drawing apps installed. But those tend to be the ones which get the most usage. Your best bet is probably to do what I did; install a load of them and see how you get on, as everyone has a different style of working and a different idea of what constitutes a usable interface. I found that, as with a lot of so-called "reviews" these days, most of the articles I searched for on topics like "XX Great Drawing Apps for Android", when I first got my tablet, were little more than rehashed press releases, outlining the features of various apps but giving no insight into their 'real world' usability.
  - gtirloni 6y ago
    Amazing, thanks for such detailed post!

gtirloni 6y ago

I just got myself a Galaxy tablet and I was wondering about drawing apps. Nothing fancy, just to spend time away from coding. Do you have any recommendations?

Normille 6y ago
You've come to the right person. I must have tried them all in my time. Here's a few that have stuck around: Ibis Paint [0] -- [Free and paid versions]. Ignore the puke-making cutesy Manga gallery that greets you when you fire it up. It's actually a really full featured drawing app with layers / filters / masking / PSD export, etc. This is the one I use most Autodesk Sketchbook [1] --[Free] Similarly full featured to Ibis Paint, but slightly less so. Text handling tools not as good. I used to use this a lot before I discovered Ibis Paint Infinite Design [2] --[Free and paid] The most full featured Vector Drawing app I've found. There's a lot in there but it can be a bit clunky to use and theres a bit of lag when drawing, which puts me off using it much. Concepts [3] --[Free and paid]. A real mixed bag this one. I find the pen tool one of the nicest and most expressive to draw with of any app I've tried. And the infinite canvas is good for just doodling and 'seeing where it takes you'. Unfortunately, it's one of those apps where the designers have thrown usability guidelines out the window, to come up with an 'innovative' interface, which I personally find really annoying to use. It also gets a lot of flak for the slow pace of development on Android. The developers have been promising feature parity with the iOS version [which is apparently much better] for years now, but it never seems to arrive. Photo Editor [4] -- [Free and paid] This is as close to a mini Photoshop as you can get on Android] as in an app for manipulating existing images, rather than drawing per se. The interface is a bit menu heavy and unintuitive at times. But there's a lot in there, if you do a bit of digging. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.ibis.ibispaintx.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.ibis.ibi... [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adsk.sketchbook https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adsk.sketc... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brakefield.idfree https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brakefield... [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tophatch.concepts https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tophatch.c... [4] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iudesk.android.photo.editor https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iudesk.and... I've got a load of other graphic and drawing apps installed. But those tend to be the ones which get the most usage. Your best bet is probably to do what I did; install a load of them and see how you get on, as everyone has a different style of working and a different idea of what constitutes a usable interface. I found that, as with a lot of so-called "reviews" these days, most of the articles I searched for on topics like "XX Great Drawing Apps for Android", when I first got my tablet, were little more than rehashed press releases, outlining the features of various apps but giving no insight into their 'real world' usability.
- gtirloni 6y ago
  Amazing, thanks for such detailed post!