Now, though, there’s Refills to play with and it turns out to have a twist that I think has a lot of potential.

It’s full name in iTunes is ‘Refills (for Google Calendar™)’ and, as this suggests, it’s designed to deal with your Google Calendar as opposed to the inbuilt iPhone one. I prefer this approach as syncing with Google Calendar means it’s always backed up, accessible even if I lost my device and allows the option to add entries using a computer when a lot of typing is required.

As I use an iPod Touch (and following my experience with [shudder] Agendus), I made sure my Wi-Fi connection was turned on before starting Refills. After pausing to update its holidays database – specific to your country – I was presented with today’s (empty) page.

Toolbar
The toolbar along the bottom gives you quick access to 1 day, 7 day, Monthly and Tasks views. The ‘More’ button leading you to an options page. The first port of call here was ‘Calendars’ to setup my Google account but there was nowhere to input my details. I did see this message however:

“In order to use multiple calendars, you need to setup syncing with Google Calendar.”

Yes, I know but where do I do that? I should point out that, at this point, I hadn’t read the Help screens. I like to play around with the app first, seeing how easy it is to use before digging into the help later. With no other clues, I assumed I would find the Google Calendar options in the iOS settings app (there was nowhere else for them to appear within Refills) but why not mention that in the message above? Sure enough, after coming out of Refills and into the Settings app, I found a pleasing number of options to twiddle with, beginning with your Google account details.

After adding those, I backed out of settings and fired up Refills again. This time (with ‘Sync at startup’ having been selected), my calendars were retrieved without a hitch. Later, I did notice that if I ran Refills while Wi-Fi was off, an error message popped up saying ‘Sync Login Failed’ that had to be manually dismissed before I could get to see my Calendar. I imagine this is another example of a developer making assumptions about their users: they’ll have an iPhone and it’ll always be connected. This would be fine except the app is available for the Touch too which certainly won’t always be connected even if the Wi-Fi was permanently on. Is there a need for an error message to get in the way at this point? Wouldn’t it be more elegant just to sync when there is a connection and carry on serenely when there isn’t? Bit of a rough edge, that.

Day View
For most, this will be the main view they use in Refills. It’s clean and well presented showing the period you set: 8:00am to midnight by default but the start time is configurable as is the time interval displayed although only with the choice of 1 or 2 hours. Other options include font size and number of lines visible. Similar choices are also available for the other views.

You move easily between days with a left or right swipe and a press of the ’1 Day’ icon on the toolbar always brings you back to ‘today’. One minor gripe is that nothing on screen indicates ‘today’. Unless I’m going blind or missing something very obvious, I couldn’t spot any indication showing which day is today. Other calendars will display today’s date in a different colour or bold or something but not Refills. Seems an odd omission to me.

There’s often a slight pause to load events when moving from one day to the next. I suspect anyone with a device more recent than my 1st gen’ iPod Touch probably wouldn’t experience this but I did find it became quite annoying. It often doesn’t even seem to cache the next and previous days events in preparation for a swipe which would seem an obvious improvement.

Pressing the ‘+’ icon (or double tapping a time slot) allows you to add an event. The usual items appear here such as title, start/finish time, location (where you have to option to use Google maps if you’re online), reminder (unsurprisingly, pop-up reminders from Refills only work if you’re running iOS 4 or above), repeat, notes and so on. All pretty standard and work fine. It is possible to set the time of the event by incorporating it into the title e.g. “3p – 4p Meeting”. This is a nice idea but, when I tried it, I found the iOS spell correction got in the way and the syntax Refills requires wasn’t quite as forgiving as I would have liked. In the end I found it quicker to simply set the time manually rather than using the iOS keyboard.

7 Days
The week view holds no surprises. It shows the period from Monday to Sunday with the start day being configurable. It would be nice to have the option to switch between ‘this week’ (Monday to Sunday) and a next 7 days view (today to 7 days hence) but unfortunately there isn’t.

It initially looked like the week view (and Month view) indicated which day was ‘today’ (unlike the Day view) but it turned out only to indicate the selected day. Tapping on another day moved the highlight, confusing matters somewhat I thought.

Month
Again, little in the way of the unexpected here. The start day is configurable (gotta be Monday for me). Swiping changes the month shown while a double tap opens the day view to that date. I also discovered that tapping the title bar (here and in the other calendar views) brings down a secondary toolbar with a redundant ‘+’ button (there’s one in the top right corner anyway) and another button on the left. This brings up an otherwise hidden set of options: Jump To Today, Jump To Date and Sync Now.

Tasks
The first time I ran Refills, I was a little surprised to see I already had 7 tasks to complete. It turns out these are a few helpful hints to get you going created in the form of tasks. By the way, the first one tells you where to setup Google Calendar settings – nice touch developers but I still say it’s worth mentioning in the options screen.

Tapping on the title area in this view brings down a toolbar allowing you to display the tasks by ‘My Order’, Due Date or by Completed. You can also add more task lists by pressing the ‘action button’ on the left and choosing ‘Add Task List’ from the options that appear. Once you have more than one task list, you can move between them with a left/right swipe and relocate each task by editing it and selecting which task list you want it to appear on. You can also easily reorder tasks in a list (when viewed in ‘My Order’) by dragging them up or down.

The most disappointing thing about Tasks, in my view, is the fact they’re not synced to any online service. I prefer PI’s ability to sync tasks to/from Toodledo but many will be happy enough with Refills simple onboard task list and what it does, it does nicely. The developers say that rather than sync to another service, they are waiting until Google allows syncing to its own tasks so, hopefully, that might happen at some point in the future.

Landscape
None of the calendar or task views work in landscape orientation, it’s portrait mode only I’m afraid. In fairness, portrait suits the views better and there’s not much to be gained in landscape mode, with the possible exception of the week view perhaps?

After I’d finished playing with the app and went through all the help and read the developers website, I discovered there is one particular circumstance when Refills throws caution to the wind. When you add or edit an event it’s possible to turn your device and use the larger keyboard available in landscape.

Help
Pressing ‘Help’ in the options/more page opens a web page style document (you don’t have to be online to view it but some links won’t work). This is rather poorly designed for use on the iPhone or Touch as a great deal of zooming and panning is required to read the tiny text, making it much more awkward than it need be. That said, the actual content is clear enough and helpful but the best way to view it is on your computer via this link.

Refill Catalog
For me, the most interesting aspect of the app showed up when I looked into the ‘Refill Catalog’. I’d assumed it was simply a set of skins that changed a few colours and added the occasional background texture. It turned out to have an unexpected twist with a lot of potential.

Refills gives you option to download and install more skins which are to be found listed in the ‘Refill Catalog’ screen. Some are free while others are 59p. The first skin I tried was called ‘Stone Black’ which, as its name suggests, darkens the pages. I was surprised to discover that as well as the visual alterations, it also included quite a drastic change of layout for the 7 day view (see above, right). Instead of the familiar grid of 6 blocks (a layout I’ve never been a fan of), you get 7 horizontal slots. I rather liked this layout and found myself wanting to use it in the ‘Standard’ skin.

My wish was soon granted as I looked a little further into the ‘catalog’. There are several (free) variations on the default skin, one of which is called ‘Standard (Wide Week View)’. This gave me exactly what I was after in the 7 day screen. Looking further still, the ‘Standard (For Weekenders)’ skin provides another variation where the 7 day view shrinks the weekdays down into one column expanding the size of Saturday and Sunday into their own half of the screen. Presumably, this is for those people with particularly hectic weekends.

Suddenly, the possibilities of a small feature I’d assumed was just a superficial colour change, widened the potential for the whole app. If more of the view options were made available to change and users allowed to design and create their own skins, customised to their particular needs, this could be a very interesting and unique feature for Refills.

I should stress this is just in my fevered imagination right now. From the examples I saw, only the 7 day view can be dramatically redesigned and users are not able to create their own skins. I can only hope the developer is heading down this road (and Apple’s guidelines allow it).

Verdict
Refills is modest in its ambitions and fulfils them reasonably well. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is, a pretty, on-device front end for your Google Calendar. Occasional interface quirks such as a needlessly replicated ‘+’ button, no visual indication of ‘today’ in the various calendar views and a couple of items that feel somewhat hidden away aren’t enough to spoil the experience to any great degree.

I don’t usually comment on the price of apps (I figure readers will decide whether an app is worth the cost to them) but I must say that £5.99 does feel too expensive for what Refills offers. This is made worse by the fact there is no free/lite version to try first. For a couple of quid more you could get the most comprehensive Calendar software on iOS, Pocket Informant, and that’s where I’d still spend my Calendar money. But, if you’re ok with the price and just want a nice looking, simple front end for your Google Calendar that you can carry around with you, Refills does a decent, if unremarkable, job.

Potentially, I think the big unique selling point for Refills could be the ability to change skins. At the moment it’s closed and limited but if this was expanded and allowed users to create and use their own skins, I could see Refills carving out a very nice little niche for itself with a genuinely useful and (as far as I know) unique feature.

A calendar app you could customise to fit your needs perfectly? Now that would be worth £5.99

Here’s a video of the app in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Refills
Version reviewed: V1.2
Category: Productivity
Developer: KGT Inc.
Price (at time of review): £5.99
Platforms: iPhone, iPod Touch (version reviewed)
UK App Store Link

I’ve previously looked at Pocket Informant and was very impressed. The regular updates since my review have meant it continues to be an excellent replacement. After all this time though, I was curious to see if PI now had serious competition with the appearance of Agendus from iambic inc.

Agendus is a name I’ve been aware of for many years. It’s calendaring software available on every major mobile platform but, for some reason, one I’ve yet to try. It’s been going since the digital stone age (or about 1999 if you prefer) – not quite as old as the fondly remembered Psion Agenda but certainly one of the elders. With all that time to develop and mature, I was expecting a smooth and pleasant experience.

Starting off
When you run Agendus, the title screen proclaims it to be an ‘All in one personal information manager’. While I was impressed with the ambition of the developers, I did wonder if it could live up to that aim and my initial impression didn’t turn out to be good.

One thing becomes very obvious straight from the off. Agendus is designed on the assumption it would be running on a device that’s always connected and for an app that supports the iPod Touch (such as my 1st gen model), that clearly won’t be the case. You may find, as I did, you’ll encounter a few quirks when it’s run with your Wi-Fi connection off.

After confirming I wanted to sync with my Google account and inputting my user information, I was greeted with an obscure error message rather than the more useful suggestion that I turn on my Wi-Fi connection and try again. Ok, so after backing out of the app, turning Wi-Fi on and trying again, it connected to Google calendar and synced my data with no further problems – that’s more like it. At this point you’re greeted with one of five screens Agendus uses, the Today view.

Today
This unsurprisingly lists any events and tasks due today but also has slots for ‘quote of the day’, ‘this day in history’ and weather. I’ve never been a ‘quote of the day’ fan but I do like ‘this day in history’ (as long as it isn’t too America-centric) and discovered that a tap brought up another example (assuming you were still online of course). I was pleased to later find the option to choose which items to show on this screen – goodbye ‘quote of the day’.

The weather slot requires a tap to change from the default Californian location to your own home town but once it’s updated, another tap brings up the forecast for the following eight days. If you prefer your temperatures spelt with a C rather than an F, there’s an option in the settings screen to display them in Celsius.

A problem that doesn’t become clear until you use it for a few days is the fact the weather doesn’t update automatically. The trouble is the summary forecast given on the main Today view isn’t dated so you’re left wondering when it relates to. Although appearing on the ‘Today’ screen, it might actually be a previous days weather. To update it, you have to move into the 9 day forecast page and hit the refresh button which strikes me as unnecessarily cumbersome.

Each item in the Today screen (Events, Tasks etc) has a plus or minus icon on the right hand side to expand and contract them. Very quickly, I noticed a couple of problems with this screen. Attempting to press the + icon for the top line (Events) actually brings up the ‘Add Items’ pane about 80% of the time. This happens because the two icons are so close together, precisely hitting the ‘+’ icon to expand the line without accidentally tapping the ‘+’ icon to add an entry requires the skill and precision of a keyhole surgeon.

Secondly, When the Events or Tasks panels are rolled up there’s no visual indication whether they contain any items, requiring you to open them to find out. When they’re empty, pressing the icon simply toggles it between + and – with no other visual indication.

Above all this though, is the feeling the space is poorly used. Not only are there two icons to get you to the Settings screen (a specific Today view cog icon on the top left and a different cog icon at the bottom right that takes you to the general options page) but each item seems fatter than it need be and, with no way to zoom out, the screen real estate seems to be used rather inefficiently.

Calendar
This screen offers several views:

– Day
– List
– Week
– Month
– Year

Each of them display your events much as you’d expect and each event is made up with the traditional title, location, due date, contact, alarm, notes etc. You can also assign an icon to it from a selection of 69 that come built into the app.

Tapping in a time slot within the Day view instantly adds a new event. This sounds very convenient until the you find yourself doing it accidentally, time after time. This quickly becomes maddening when you find more and more actions get misinterpreted for an ‘add event’ tap. For example, according to the tutorial video, a simple tap on the top of an event allows you to drag it to a different time slot. It might when using the mouse in the iPhone simulator as featured in the video (actually, even there it takes several attempts) but in the real world, I found this almost impossible. What happens is you scroll the view down a little to give yourself space (probably invoking an unwanted ‘add event’ action in the process) then, very carefully, tap and hold on the top edge of the event (as seen in the video) and guess what? Another unwanted ‘add event’ occurs.

What makes this absolutely infuriating is the fact that when the keyboard pops up for you to add text to the event, there’s no cancel button! You’re forced to create this unwanted event. After much experimentation and investigation, I discovered a shake seems to (eventually) dismiss the keyboard but still leaves you with an unwanted ‘New Event’.

So, after making a dozen unwanted events, it’ll be a simple swipe to delete them, right? Wrong. Swiping or tapping on the event brings the keyboard back so what you have to do for each item is very carefully hit the tiny ‘>’ arrow in the upper right corner of its box to bring up the ‘View Event’ screen (although you’ll inevitably spark off another ‘add event’ action half the time). Here you’ll find the delete event button which you press and confirm. At best, three taps (assuming you get lucky and not kick off multiple new event actions in the process) instead of a simple swipe and tap to delete.

Another problem (admittedly minor in comparison to most others) is the fact that ‘all day’ events and tasks (even ones with a due time) are parked off the top of the day view at the midnight position. Unless you’re in the habit of scrolling to the top of the screen every day you look at, you’ll never see them in this view.

By comparison, the other views were a joy to use. Don’t get me wrong, they were still rather poor by normal standards but compared to using the Day view, they were a delight.

I should note that Agendus includes a year view (something Pocket Informant lacks) but as welcome as it was, it didn’t seem to use the space well and every change of year prompted another pause with only a ‘Loading Events’ popup for entertainment. It was here I first noticed the lack of support for landscape orientation. Every calendar view would benefit from this option but there is zero support for it in Agendus.

For a long time, I hunted around for a way to return to today’s date in these various views. It’s not obvious but I eventually discovered that a shake does it. Personally, I’d prefer a button or possibly a double tap on the title bar to get the same effect – I’ve never been a fan of the shake action.

Tasks
Here you can add a task and assign it a category, due date, icon and add some notes. There’s no pretence at using the GTD philosophy (which, not being a fan, is fine with me) and the tasks, although simple, do their job well enough.

I was surprised and disappointed to find the tasks didn’t sync to an online service such as ToodleDo or Remember the Milk. Having become accustomed to this functionality in Pocket Informant and seeing the other items sync to Google Calendar, I’d assumed Agendus would allow for tasks to be synced to the cloud somewhere. The idea of them not being backed up makes me a little nervous and I also miss the ability to use my PC to type long notes or easily add several new tasks when I need to.

Contacts
This screen puzzled me. Why would I want my contacts duplicated in my calendar app I wondered. On first inspection it offers little more than the native Contacts app but does provide a ‘Birthdays’ view listing everyone whose birth date you’ve added in upcoming order as well as showing how old they’ll be. Useful I suppose but it seems rather unnecessary – your opinion may differ of course especially if you’re using an iPhone which means you’ll be able to dial direct from this view.

The manual suggests Agendus adds valuable functionality to the contacts by integrating it into various aspects of your tasks and calendar (i.e. adding a contact to a calendar or todo entry). I wasn’t convinced by this and more than a little wary (possibly unfairly) of the fact that Agendus seems to be able to write to the native Contacts file. Given the lack of polish evident in most other areas of Agendus, I wasn’t happy for it to mess with my contacts and wished there was the option to disable it.

Prefs
As you’d expect, there are options here to change many aspects of the software including selection and rearrangement of the items on the Today view and much else besides. It also includes two items that caused me to shoot tea out of my nose but I’ll come to those later.

Help
I always like to first try using an app ‘blind’ before diving into any documentation as this gives me a good idea how well designed and easy to use it is. Agendus faired pretty well here. I was able to operate it successfully before looking at the documentation (or even the demo video). Much of this is down to the simplicity of the app. It isn’t packed with features and you’d expect it to be reasonably straightforward to get your head around and so it proved.

When you first start Agendus, you’re offered the chance to watch a brief (online) tutorial video. You can also get to this via an option in the prefs screen (or find it located at the end of this review). As I didn’t see it before jumping in (I wasn’t connected to the net, remember), I chose to avoid watching this as part of my ‘dive in with no instruction and see how well you get on’ approach. Watching it later revealed a couple of surprises. The main one was the ‘shake to return to today’ functionality. I’d already tried that when I first looked at the calendar but it hadn’t worked for me. So I tried again and it still didn’t work and so I tried again with a really exaggerated shake and… it worked! And it’s worked ever since. As much as I’d like to blame Agendus for this, I’m happy to put this one down as my fault.

Another titbit gleaned from the video was the ability to move an event or change its duration by dragging the upper or lower edge in the Day view. I found changing the duration worked well enough but dragging the top proved almost impossible as I’ve already explained.

I’m always pleased to see developers taking the time to provide detailed support for their apps whether it’s in the form of an ‘onboard’ help screen, website, video or, as in this case, a downloadable PDF manual. I found this oddly in keeping with the rest of the app. Superficially, it did the job but spend any time with it and little quirks and oddities soon show up (“The upper portion of the screen displays an common full-month”). I also found reference to ‘Day View Preferences’ which would supposedly allow me to set the start time for a day. Search as I might, I couldn’t find it in the app and an email to the developer confirmed it’s a mistake which needs to be removed from the manual. The lesson from this? I hope they take the trouble to get the next version of the manual properly tested and proof read.

Future features
Planned features include integration with the built-in iPhone calendar and a desktop version to synchronise with (although I’m not sure if that’ll be Windows, Mac or both). I’m also told the developers are on the verge of releasing an iPad version and I’ll be curious to see how it differs from the iPhone and how well they’ll fair, designing the interface.

Verdict
This has been the most difficult app review I’ve written so far.

You know in the Pink Panther films, the way every little thing Inspector Clouseau does infuriates his boss, Dreyfus to the point where Dreyfus develops a nervous twitch and wants to cause physical harm to Clouseau every time he sees him? That’s a pretty accurate reflection of my time with Agendus.

I like to believe my reviews are detailed, fair, reasonable and while I express my opinion, offer enough unbiased reporting to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. This time though, I’ve found it extremely difficult to stop myself shouting incredulously about all its faults and simply writing ‘Don’t buy it!’

I’d assumed that an app with such a long history would be refined and polished to near perfection (it should be shouldn’t it?) but this version at least is frustrating to use with its design and layout feeling rather rushed and badly thought through. Not having experience of Agendus on any other platform, I can’t judge whether this follows the same historic layout and functionality of other versions or is simply a particularly poor implementation.

Although it’s a little more expensive, Pocket Informant offers more features, better design and largely flawless implementation. It also has regular updates, something I’m unable to judge for Agendus although I know new features are being planned. Perhaps it’s unfair to judge one app against another in terms of numbers of features, after all, Agendus doesn’t claim to do anything that it doesn’t (I’ll be generous and ignore the “All in one personal information manager” line in the title screen). But even if PI only had the same features as Agendus, it would still win easily as they’re designed and implemented so much better – almost as if someone had given it some serious thought, employed competent professionals to implement it and taken the time to test it. Oh, they did.

Is Agendus really that bad? Time and again, when I went to explore the next new part of the app, I’d find some new horror to spoil the experience. The difference between baffling design and poor implementation became blurred as I came across one irritant and another. The annoying wait for ‘Loading Events’ every time it’s started, the weather not being dated on the Today screen, no cancel button when adding a new event in the Day view, design inconsistencies (two cog/settings icons on the Today screen but nowhere else), no support for landscape orientation, being unable to delete unwanted events in the Day view with the standard swipe (it activates the keyboard), the multiple ways to accidentally add a new event in Day view… I could go on.

It got to the point when I started to think these mistakes were deliberate. Surely no-one could make this many wrong decisions? It’s as if the developers had a meeting, decided what all the correct ways to do things were, threw them out and asked themselves ‘what’s the wrong way to do this?’. Don’t believe me? How do you suppose you move from one month to the next in the month view? Swipe horizontally? No. You swipe vertically. I am not kidding. It’s in the manual, check it for yourself – page 18, near the bottom.

That is some radical, free thinking right there. Or do I mean moronic?

As if the poor design and implementation wasn’t enough to make me dislike this app, two items in the settings screen only served to put the nail in the coffin. There’s an item in there to set up your Twitter account. Why? According to the manual, “The Twitter field allows you define which Twitter client to “Tweet the Love” about Agendus.”

Love!? By this point Agendus had provoked many, strong emotional reactions in me but love was most certainly not one of them.

Imagine the state of my blood pressure by this time then consider what seeing the following item did for me. As if supplying shoddy software (that you have to pay for) wasn’t enough, the developer adds insult to injury with the following button, found at the bottom of the options screen:

‘Buy More Icons’

Yes, ‘Buy’. I did a double take when I spotted that. Of all the money grabbing ways to exploit your users, this struck me as particularly cynical, irksome and insulting. If you’re interested in the details, they’re offering two sets of 48 icons for 99 cents per set. I’d suggest the developers concentrate on improving their software so sales naturally increase and throw in the icons free for their poor, suffering paying customers.

Never before has an app actually made me angry.

I suppose someone, somewhere (presumably with masochistic tendencies and supreme patience) could use Agendus and find it does what they want but, really, why live with that pain when there are much better alternatives? If you’re looking for a replacement Calendar app, install the lite version of Pocket Informant and see how it should be done. I’d offer the same advice to the developers of Agendus too.

Have I gone over the top with my dislike of this app? All I can say is I’ve done my best to deliver a calm, sober reflection of my experience using Agendus despite its best efforts to wind me up (and, indeed, drive me to drink). I’ve had to very deliberately rewrite this review a number of times, toning it way down each time. You should have seen the earlier drafts.

To sum Agendus up in as restrained and objective a way as I can manage: it’s disappointing and very often infuriating.

Here’s a video (released by the developer) of the app in action. Bear in mind it’s a video of the app running in the iPhone simulator where the selection is made not by a human finger but with the pixel precision of a mouse:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Agendus
Version reviewed: V2.3
Category: Productivity
Developer: iambic inc.
Current Price: £4.99
Platforms: iPhone, iPod Touch (version reviewed), iPad (in development)
UK App Store Link

Developer, Sylwester Los of Lucky Clan, says of his new painting app ArtStudio, that “My goal was to create the best (quality, performance, options-wise) drawing/painting app for the iPhone.” That’s quite an ambition and I was keen to find out if he’d succeeded.

Things get off to a good start when you fire up ArtStudio for the first time and a simple but friendly help screen is displayed showing the main controls (which can be viewed later if necessary via the save/load menu under Tips and Tricks/Quick Tutorial). It turns out there’s plenty more to discover but this is enough to get you going.

Straight away I had a slight feeling of déjà vu. Undo and redo are a simple tap of the top left and top right corners respectively. Hhhhm, reminiscent of SketchBook Mobile but at the top of the screen rather than the bottom. Later, I would get a similar feeling with other features making me think the developer took the best bits of other apps and incorporated them into his. As a user, I’m all in favour of this – I want the best tools and interface designs in one shiny, state of the Art app. No need to re-invent the wheel when someone’s already found a good way to, say, undo a mistake or activate the colour picker.

Interface
The main view consists of little more than a blank page and an arrow in the bottom right corner. Tapping this brings up the toolbar which consists of icons for Brushes, Colour, Layers, Filters, Load/Save, Lessons, Settings and minimise toolbar. Most of these items conceal more than you might expect, the first three particularly.

Tapping the Brushes icon brings up a sidebar giving a choice of eight tools including Pencil, Brush, Airbrush, Eraser and Fill. Changing from one to another is a simple case of tapping the appropriate icon. Another touch of the main toolbar icon dismisses the sidebar. But, tap and hold the Brush icon for a second and the extended controls appear, allowing you to make adjustments to the cross section, opacity, spacing and so on. Similar advanced features are also available for Colour and Layers using the tap and hold gesture.

Layers
It’s a measure of the rapid pace of app development that layers, a brand new, cutting edge feature when I reviewed Layers (the application) back in July last year is now a standard tool in any new serious painting app. It’s also a useful yardstick with which to compare the top end apps. The current winner, for me, is the previously mentioned Layers app. Not only does it give you all the functionality you need but presents it in a slick and attractive 3D interface.

AppStore’s effort is far from the worst version of the layers feature I’ve seen (that goes to the functional but pig ugly effort found in the otherwise slick SketchBook Mobile) and gives you up to five layers to play with (even on my 1st generation iPod Touch) which is a very useable number. If the Beatles can create Sgt. Pepper on a four track, then I can certainly knock up a few sketches using five layers.

You can manipulate layers in all the ways you’d expect. Creating, deleting, merging, flipping, changing opacity and clearing etc. Re-ordering them is easily achieved by dragging one up or down to a new position – simple and intuitive.

Something I found extremely useful was the ‘Transform’ option which allows you to move, scale and rotate the selected layer. The result is that I could work on a particular part of a drawing (the nose, say) on a separate layer then use the transform option to tweak the position, size and rotation until I was happy with it – a huge time saver. The only way I can see this being improved is if you could select an area from an existing layer and create new layers from that selection which would make it easier to fix mistakes. As it stands, you can replicate that functionality by duplicating a layer and erasing everything but the area you want to keep. This will work but is a bit long winded.

The implementation of layers in ArtStudio isn’t perfect though. I discovered it was possible to accidentally draw on the current layer even if its visibility was turned off, which can’t be a good thing. I also stumbled across an odd bug when I was experimenting with creating and deleting layers. I made a new layer, scribbled a few lines then deleted it. Shortly after, I created another new layer to find it appear complete with my previous scribbles. I couldn’t replicate this so came to the conclusion it was a bug rather than a feature.

Filters
Next stop along the toolbar is a button for various filters. Selecting this option allows you to choose from such effects as inverting the colours, blurring the image, edge detect, embossing and a couple of others. Apart from possibly needing to sharpen the occasional photo, I can’t really imagine much of a use for these myself but perhaps others will.

Save/Load
Here you create a new painting, save, load and export your images or import an existing photo. You can also view the online Flickr gallery of images created by other ArtStudio users as well as submit your own. Oddly, the help options and ‘About’ screen are here which I would’ve thought should more logically be found in the settings screen.

The Tips & Tricks button leads you to the Quick Tutorial page seen when the app’s first started and also a list of useful tips for the app.

Drawing Lessons
ArtStudio features something unique in top end painting applications – drawing lessons. I was pleased to see this included as it’s something I’d want to add if I was developing my own drawing app. There are eleven lessons included, mostly covering faces with three each on cartoon animals and perspective. The lessons can be viewed either by playing back all the steps as a continuous video or as a series of steps drawn by the app which the user then has to effectively trace.

Be careful when starting a lesson as you won’t be prompted to save your current painting so any work done since the last save will be lost. Also, when you get to the end and want to save the image, be sure to select the ‘Save a copy’ option otherwise you’ll overwrite your own work. The best bet is to hit the ‘New Image’ button before starting the lessons.

While I applaud the aim, I found the lessons frustrating as it very much feels like a wasted opportunity. They amount to a series of ‘trace this line’ actions and while this might amuse a child for a short time it does little to truly educate a novice wanting to learn how to draw. As an educational tool, they are no better than a painting by numbers kit.

In fairness, there are a couple that hint at being useful, the perspective lessons and the one named ‘Head Proportions’. But what they still lack is any kind of explanation of what the user is seeing, what use it is and how to apply it in their own work. In a word, disappointing.

Settings
For an app with so many features, there are surprisingly few settings. You can elect to enable a drawing offset (so the mark appears above your finger rather than under it). There’s also a Drawing delay control which I could find no good use for. Add to this a drawing mode to create straight lines and an option to turn off the shake menu.

Shake menu
A gentle shake of your device brings up several options: Brush Settings, Zoom 100%, Fit image to screen and Clear Layer. The only useful options (well, the only ones that can’t easily be invoked any other way) are the ‘100% Zoom’ and ‘Fit image to screen’ which alone makes the shake menu invaluable for reasons I’ll explain later.

Ok, them’s the tools but what can you do with them?

Painting
As per my usual habit when reviewing a painting app, I decided to test it by drawing a caricature of some famous face and Matt Damon’s the victim this time. That decided, the next step is to create a new painting in Art Studio. This is done via the Save/Load menu. Here you’re given the choice of a 320×480, 342×512, 512×342 or 512×512 canvas (iPhone 3GS and 3rd gen’ Touch users get further choices up to 1024×1024). I’ve never understood why anyone would choose anything less than the highest resolution available so I select the 512×512 size.

First things first, I tap on the Colour icon and up pops the palette of 14 colours. If none of these are exactly what you’re after, pressing the colour icon for a second or so adds the advanced options. Here you can choose any hue either via the RGB sliders or, more likely, simply by tapping on the spectrum to select a rough colour and homing in on the exact hue/saturation using the larger colour box. This new colour will replace the currently selected swatch in the palette of 14. The original ‘factory default’ colours can easily be recalled either individually or all at once by pressing the ‘Reset’ button. Once a colour is chosen, the palette is dismissed by tapping the colour icon again.

Next, it’s time to select a drawing tool and a tap of the Brush icon brings up the sidebar with a choice of 8 tools as well as a slider to adjust the brush size. Again, a longer press of the icon adds the advanced options which allow you to adjust various aspects of the stroke. Déjà vu rears up again here as ArtStudio features a very similar ‘simulated pressure sensitivity’ effect to that found in SketchBook Mobile which translates to being able to taper the start and end of a stroke depending on the swipe speed. A simple but effective trick and one you can tweak by adjusting the parameters on the advanced screen. If that doesn’t appeal, you can leave these options well alone and simply use the defaults quite happily.

The same advanced controls are available for most of the drawing tools except smudge and fill bucket.

Smudge
Anyone who’s read any of my previous painting app reviews will be aware of a personal hobby horse of mine, the smudge tool. As far as I’m concerned this is a must for any serious painting app. The reason being the time it saves blending two or more colours together. The good news is ArtStudio includes a smudge tool. The bad news is that it doesn’t hold a candle to the excellent blend tool featured in Inspire but then, I’ve yet to find another painting app that does.

Fill Bucket
The Fill tool features ‘Smart Filling’ which translates to the ability to fill a shape as you’d hope rather than having ugly gaps where the fill colour meets the anti-aliased edges of the boundary line. If that’s Greek to you, don’t worry, just know that fill works as you’d want it to.

Once I got to grips with changing colours and selecting the right drawing tool, I made quick progress in ArtStudio. The sidebar idea works well – allowing you to select a colour or tool without obscuring the drawing surface and dismissing it altogether is only a tap away. This results in speedy progress and very little frustration from the interface butting in unnecessarily.

After a time, I found the main reason I’d need to bring up the advanced options on the brush screen was to adjust the opacity. Although you get the size slider when either the colour or brush sidebar is up, you have to dive down a bit further to adjust the opacity. I wonder if it would be feasible for the developer to add an extra slider under the brush size to save that extra tap or two?

Dodge & Burn please
Now that all the serious painting apps sport smudge and layer tools, the next major feature I’d like them to add are Dodge and Burn. These would allow users to easily lighten and darken colours meaning less need to fiddle around trying to find a colour’s neighbouring hi-light and shadow tones. Currently I have to select the area’s colour, dive into the colour screen (to lighten or darken) then apply it manually. Dodge and Burn would speed this part of the process up greatly and I’d happily trade all the filters for these two tools if necessary.

Orienteering
Frustratingly, I’ve yet to come across a painting app that handles drawing in landscape and upside down as it should (in my opinion anyway) and ArtStudio is no exception. Surely an Artist should be able to turn their iPhone on its side (either side of course) and the tools rotate accordingly so they are in the same relative position? And for those of us who regularly want to draw upside down, it should be even easier to rotate the controls 180 degrees while keeping the canvas facing the same way? Why developers neglect these details is beyond me – perhaps it’s a great deal more difficult to code than I’m led to believe. I can imagine rearranging the toolbars to fit a landscape orientation may be troublesome but simply rotating them 180 degrees for upside down must be a doddle, surely?

Zoom
One of the boasts for the app in the AppStore blurb is that it features unlimited zoom. While I didn’t have time to test that thoroughly (infinity takes a while to get to – I’d have to change the laws of physics first and I can’t be bothered right now), you can see from the screenshot that it doesn’t disappoint. The only problem with this enormous range is quickly getting back to 100% which can only (as far as I could tell) be jumped back to by using the ‘Zoom 100%’ or ‘Fit to screen’ buttons in the shake menu, making it invaluable. While an unlimited zoom is nice in theory, I couldn’t help but wonder why you’d ever want to zoom beyond the point where one pixel is filling the whole screen. Still, I guess it allows for larger canvases in the future.

Undo Redo
ArtStudio features an Undo/Redo system that allows an “almost infinite” number of steps. Quite what ‘almost infinite’ means is anyone’s guess (infinity -1 perhaps?) but I didn’t find cause to doubt the claim and it worked fine.

Once I’d learned the tools and how to use them, I found painting with ArtStudio a reasonably pleasant experience. The interface is a little quirky but generally keeps out of your way and is certainly less aggravating than many similar apps.

Talking of quirks, ArtStudio has its fair share. I got the distinct feeling that the app hadn’t been put through enough testing to iron out all the niggles. Whether it’s bugs or feature, erm, foibles, ArtStudio isn’t the entirely trouble free experience it should be. For example, there were occasions when I’d hit ‘Save’ and be given the option to overwrite the current file or save a copy. Then, at other times, it would just overwrite without asking.

It also crashed. This is far from unheard of but in this case it caused me to lose work which I had to recreate. Imagine what that did for my peace of mind for the remainder of the time I worked on my painting.

Verdict
So has developer, Sylwester Los achieved his goal of creating the best drawing/painting app for the iPhone?

Well, using his three criteria, in terms of quality, there are certainly bugs to be found. This I usually tolerate in early versions of an iPhone app but this one caused me to lose work which is pretty unforgivable. However, I’m going to assume it was down to me not rebooting my Touch after installation. And, in fairness, I didn’t lose work after I’d done that. So, as for quality… I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume this will improve in future versions. I should also mention the majority of my review was done using version 1.21 but as I was finishing it, V2.0 was released and during my time using that, it seemed to behave itself better.

I’ve no complaints regarding performance. Assuming that means speed of operation, I had no slow down issues while using it on my 1st Gen’ iPod Touch so that gets a big thumbs up.

As for what the developer calls ‘options’, this is where ArtStudio scores. It’s loaded with features and reminds me of an old favourite, PhotoForge. Not only has it got enough painting tools to keep most Artists happy, but it also contains some photographic features such as Sepia and Invert Colours filters. As an Artist, I’d much rather have a Dodge and Burn tool than the filters (or Lessons) and I’d prefer the sublime blend tool of Inspire rather than the crude (and aptly named) smudge included in ArtStudio (and most other painting apps).

Still, when it comes to value for money, ArtStudio certainly gives you a lot of toys to play with. But if you’re judging it by the feature list, I’d suggest you go for the similarly feature packed PhotoForge as it feels more reliable to use and has a slightly slicker interface. For pure painting though (despite its somewhat clunky interface), nothing has yet to beat Inspire.

At the moment, ArtStudio feels rather too flaky and unpolished but I can see it, in time, becoming a worthy choice in the crowded painting app field.

Here’s a video of ArtStudio in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

ArtStudio
Version reviewed: V2.0
Category: Photography
Developer: Lucky Clan
Current Price: £2.39
Platforms: iPhone, iPod Touch (version reviewed), iPad
UK App Store Link

So, come 6pm (UK time) on the 27th January, I was to be found hunched over my laptop, tea in hand and phone off the hook waiting for the gadget sites to reveal the news live, one line at a time. Never has it been such agony waiting for web pages to auto refresh. The day after, the first thing I did was to watch the video of the whole event which, it has to be said, gave me a rather different impression of the audiences reaction to the one I had from reading the live blogs.

So, it was to be called the iPad – seems a decent name to me. Both generic enough to allow the device to be used for anything and similar to ‘iPod’ to have that family connection. Yeah, there are some obvious jokes but we soon got used to the ‘Wii’, right?

“What this device does, is extraordinary”.

Ok, Steve, what does it do?

To demonstrate this extraordinaryness, Jobs took to a comfy chair for a fairly lengthy play with his new toy. First, browsing the web. Here’s where I started to question this thing. Steve said it’s like having the whole web in your hand – (apart from the lack of Flash, of course) but can’t I do the same thing with my Touch?

What is the iPad offering that’s new exactly? Next, he showed email. Again, I can do that easily with my Touch – what’s new on the iPad? Same with viewing Photos, Music, iTunes Store, Contacts, Maps and Video. I can do all that on my Touch. Ok, the apps have been rewritten to work a little differently and make use of the bigger screen (even the occasional new feature such as albums in Photos) but really, not so different from my present iPod Touch experience.

The calendar was the one native app that seemed different enough to count as new and not be easily replicated on the iPhone or Touch. But then again, the native calendar app on the iPhone is so poor, it’s difficult not to improve on it and I already use a much better alternative (Pocket Informant).

While I watched the video of the event, it struck me how few times there was applause during Steve’s demo and it seemed to me that he was expecting more. I thought it telling when, at the end of the demo, in response to the lack of applause (or so it seemed to me) Steve said:

“I have to say, though, watching it is nothing like getting one in your hands and feeling all of that just, right, right in your hands, and right underneath your fingertips.”

I had the feeling the live audience was, like me, waiting for something new and ‘extraordinary’ that they couldn’t already see and do on their iPhones.

Next, was a section showing that the iPad could run (“nearly”) all iPhone apps. By definition, I can already do that on my Touch (well, except for the iPhone specific ones). So, no advantage for me there.

My one prediction/hope for the iPad was some form of pressure sensitivity making it better to paint and draw on. This was dashed during the demo of a new version of ‘Brushes’. I do still hold out hopes that pseudo pressure sensitivity could be added in a firmware update (by taking the contact patch of your finger into account) or via a Wacom style pen accessory.

The game demos didn’t display anything that wouldn’t be possible on the iPhone. The bigger screen arguably allows space for more controls but when you’re adding them simply because there’s room, you have to wonder if they’re necessarily an improvement.

iBooks
eBooks are already available on the iPhone but this is an area the iPad may genuinely be better suited for. The bigger screen may well be the factor that makes it preferable to the smaller device. I’ve yet to be won over to eBooks rather than the paper variety but I’d happily be converted once I get to try them on the iPad.

iWork
When I saw the Apple iWork suite had been ported over to the iPad, it was the first time in the presentation I thought that the iPad could offer something substantial the iPhone doesn’t. I can imagine using the iPad to write on a journey using Pages whereas I wouldn’t seriously consider it using my Touch with one of the ‘Office’ suites available.

Overall
I’m very aware that I’ve not been able to play with an iPad at this point. I’ve heard at least two people (including Stephen Fry) echo Steve Jobs’ comment that you have to try it to really ‘get’ it. I’m more than happy to admit playing with one might convert me but right now, I’ve only the presentation and the information on Apples website to base my opinion on.

The impression I’m left with is that, contrary to what Steve said, what this device does, is not extraordinary. It’s largely possible now, today on my iPod Touch. And I can imagine, in an alternative universe where the iPad came out first, Jobs now making the claim that the brand new iPhone/Touch was the more extraordinary device as they’d now managed to shrink all that functionality down into a pocket sized device as opposed to the old, unwieldy ten inch iPad.

There are two reasons to buy a gadget:

1. because you need it, or
2. because you want it.

At this point I certainly don’t feel I need it as it doesn’t do anything I can’t already do either with my Touch or laptop. The only circumstance I can imagine the iPad being my preferred choice is when I’m away from home and get the urge to sketch or paint something (especially if they get around to adding some kind of pressure sensitivity).

Do I want one?

Erm… not sure. I certainly want to have a go with one and if I was given one I’d be extremely happy (I’m a confirmed gadget fan after all) but as for buying it… for me, for now, no.

[We have a few more thoughts on the iPad coming along shortly. I’m also in the “Erm…” camp at the moment! – Matt]

It’s surprising then, how few apps cover this function. Microsoft has spent decades and tens of millions designing, developing and testing their office applications and they work on high powered desktop computers. So, any developer wanting to make the equivalent for the iPhone has their work cut out.

Byte Squared has taken up the challenge and has an app allowing you to view, create and edit Word documents called Doc² and another that does the same for Excel files called Sheet². Will they allow you to leave your laptop at the office when out on business?

Doc²
First up is the word processor, Doc². In common with other apps that deal with files, it opens to a ‘library’ type view that contains all your documents. Here, you’re able to create folders and copy, move and delete files to your hearts content. The interface is a little inconsistent here as you have to press the blue arrow to rename or email the file but tap the middle icon on the toolbar to move or copy them. This split seems odd and I can’t help feeling it would be better to gather all these functions into one screen.

Creating a new file is a case of tapping the ‘+’ button at which point you’re prompted to enter a name. Once done, the file is opened and you’re taken straight into the new document. Oddly, you aren’t immediately able to start typing (surely the first thing you’re likely to want to do) but hitting the keyboard button in the top right of the screen solves this.

The first annoyance becomes evident here. Turning your device on its side is pointless – it doesn’t work in landscape. Surely anyone creating an app whose main purpose is text entry will realise many (if not most) users prefer the larger keyboard that landscape orientation provides? Apparently not. Let’s hope this is quickly fixed in a future update.

Typing works as standard in the iPhone OS including the usual predictive text which is handy as no other spell check is provided in the app. However, Doc² starts to come into its own as you add formatting to your text.

Formatting
Above the keyboard is a ribbon of icons for the formatting controls. From left to right they provide access to:

– Text formatting
– Alignment
– Indents
– Lists
– Picture or table insertion.

A swipe of the ribbon to the left reveals three more tools, namely:

– Find
– Undo
– Redo

Select a piece of text (double tapping to highlight a word and triple tapping to select whole paragraphs comes in very handy here) and hit the formatting icon. This brings up a host of familiar options (although a couple have confusing icons): Bold, Italic, Underline, Text colour, Fill colour and Font style. The first three immediately change the selected text as expected while the other options bring up a dialogue box to either change a colour or alter font and size.

Only certain fonts are available in Doc² presumably to be compatible with Word so you’ll find no ‘Marker Felt’ for example. Copying a chunk of text over from the notes app works fine but the font will be changed from marker felt.

While changing various aspects of a font’s appearance is easy enough, it wasn’t long before I found myself wishing the app contained some idea of definable Styles. Change a few words of text to appear larger, bold and in a different colour (for a heading perhaps), and you have to manually change all the settings back to resume ‘normal’ text. Being able to apply named styles would come in very handy.

Another little irritant, although less common, was when I selected several lines of text, all with different fonts, to make them larger. This isn’t possible without also resetting them all to the same font. I had expected the font side of the selection roller to be greyed out allowing me to just choose the new size but no, both the font and size will be changed.

Changing text colour or its background (i.e. highlight) colour first gives you the choice of 16 standard options but hitting the ‘More colors’ button takes you to a very, erm, unique selection screen. You can choose any colour you want but the interface is unusual to say the least. There’s a ‘hue’ slider but no indication of what hue can be found at any particular point along it. I would have expected a bitmap showing the rainbow of hues to be behind the slider to give the user a clue where the blues, greens or whatever can be found. Anyway, strange but not unusable.

In what I can only assume is a bug, background/highlight colours didn’t appear to be saved with the file. Opening the document up again didn’t show it at all although the font’s colour remained intact. Copying the file to my PC confirmed the loss of the highlight colour.

Insert options
This gives the option of inserting a table or picture. If you elect to insert a picture, you’re limited to selecting from the ‘Saved Photos’ folder on your device. You can select and copy the picture from another folder and paste it into the document but isn’t that a little clunky? You’ve also the option to save a picture from the web (via Safari) to your ‘saved photos’ folder.

Once a photo is inserted, things get messy. Tap the picture and resize ‘handles’ appear supposedly allowing you to resize the picture but I found this very laggy and difficult to use precisely. Perhaps smaller files work better but even so, I didn’t find inserting pictures to be worth the trouble.

Tables
I was a little surprised to see tables catered for. I say that as even the word processor I use as a replacement to big, slow MS Word doesn’t contain that functionality. Adding a table is simply a case of specifying the number of rows and columns you want and hitting ‘Create’.

I would have liked to see a preview in the ‘add table’ page to give an idea of the result before committing to it but if you make a mistake setting it up, it’s easy enough to undo and try again. And you’d better spot your mistake at the beginning as it’s impossible to edit the table once it’s created. You’ll have to delete it and start again if you realise too late that you’ve not included enough columns or rows (or added too many, come to that). I did discover to my surprise, you could insert a table within a table but the mind boggles at the prospect of getting this right without the ability to edit them.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I was unable to paste cells from Sheet² into a document. I’d hoped it would appear as a fully formed and formatted table but it wasn’t to be. I assume this is because the two apps are separate and the iPhone OS clipboard can’t handle this type of object.

Writing
Writing with Doc² is pretty much as you’d expect but there are a few foibles that crop up. I found it a bit too easy to hit the Close button when I was trying to select words or position the caret (cursor) on the top left corner of the screen/page. I’d like to be able to pull the page down a little so I could select that area with no danger of hitting the Close button.

This isn’t possible because of the view used. Doc² uses what Word calls the ‘Normal’ view as opposed to the WYSIWYG ‘Print Layout’ view. This means much of how the text is arranged on the page is hidden from the user. Whether this bothers you will depend how you’re used to working. I found, for example, that when I inserted a picture, it was impossible to see how it sat in the page and would appear in the final document. Altogether, not a very useful view.

Zooming is accomplished as we’ve come to expect with a pinch, the text wrapping as you go. I couldn’t find a way to reset the zoom back to ‘normal’ (or 100% or whatever the term would be) so it’s easy to lose track of what ‘distance’ you’re viewing the page from. This, combined with the wrapping, is a problem as it’s troublesome to judge fonts sizes – is that font way too big or am I just zoomed in too much?

It’s also not possible to easily navigate around long documents. You have to laboriously scroll up and down through your document as there’s no ‘go to page’ or bookmark options to easily jump to a different section. The only alternative is to use the ‘Find’ tool to quickly move to a part of your doc that contains some memorable keyword.

Transferring files
There are a number of ways to send and receive files between your device and the world. It can be done via email or Wi-Fi directly to/from your Windows or Mac computer. Alternately, you can transfer files to/from your Google Docs or MobileMe iDisk accounts. During testing, I was able to download a simple document from my Google Docs account but got an error when I tried to copy one up to it.

I copied a number of documents over from my PC to Doc² to see how it would cope. Trying to load an ‘rtf’ (rich text format) file crashed the app but then, it doesn’t claim to support the file type (but why crash and why not support it?) I was curious to try loading my CV. Although the file size is small, it does contain serious amounts of fancy formatting which even other versions of Word have had a tough time dealing with. The best I can say is Doc² didn’t crash. What happens is that after several seconds, the doc opens to a very long document (curious when my CV is only two pages long). It’s also entirely blank except for half a dozen dots (I’ll assume they are bullet points) toward the end.

Next, I tried loading a document that contains some text in two columns. Although it kept most of the text intact, the section in two columns appeared in one and the square bullet points I had chosen were transformed back into the default round blobs. I added a few words, saved the doc and transferred it back to my PC where I checked it in Word. It appeared just as it had in Doc² with the two column formatting lost and bullet points changed. The page numbers that I had originally set up in Word to appear in the footer were also missing.

Help
An ‘i’ button is available on the main documents library screen but requires you to be online. For any app that has anything other than the most simplistic functions, I think the help should be available offline too even if it isn’t as full and comprehensive. The obvious solution to me would be to include the help file as a document – it seems a puzzling omission and would be an excellent demonstration of all the features such as text formatting, pictures and tables as well as a handy offline reference.

The online help is fairly comprehensive but a little clunky with repeated sections (‘Bold, italic, underline formatting’) and what seem to be unfinished parts (check the ‘Copying and pasting’ section) but despite this, it’s a pretty decent reference.

Sheet²
As the sister app to Doc² I was expecting to fire this up and find it very similar in functionality and quality. It is similar in the sense that you start at the document screen and are able to create folders and spreadsheet files, move, copy, delete and rename them. You’ll also find the import and export options work in much the same way.

But, when I created a ‘Workbook’ as the app calls them, and opened it, I immediately got a feeling of a slicker, more comprehensive and polished app. For a start, the number of toolbars increases from one and a bit to three, packed with numerous tools. Also, it works in landscape orientation (well, partially – tap on the Style icon and its screen is only displayed in portrait orientation). I think it’s a safe bet that this has had a lot more work done to it than the word processor app.

I was briefly stumped by the lack of a keyboard button but soon spotted the ‘Enter value’ field above the sheet. Tapping this brings up the keyboard where you can enter numbers and text. Having entered a number I found myself naturally looking for the arrow keys to simultaneously enter the number and move the cursor to the next cell as I would on my PC. Obviously, they don’t exist on the iPhone keyboard but on a hunch I tried tapping the next cell down and achieved the same result. Other actions are also pretty intuitive such as double tapping a cell to edit its contents.

Tools
The ribbon of tools in Sheet² pack in far more than its sister word processor app. The first page contains:

– Style
– Select/Edit worksheet
– Copy
– Cut
– Paste
– Sum
– Function

The second page offers:

– Full screen
– Freeze panes
– Sort
– Insert columns and rows
– Bold
– Italic
– Search

The third toolbar allows you to add bold lines around the selected cells. Weirdly, no undo or redo tools appear to be available.

Function-ality
The serious spreadsheet user will be pleased to find a ton of functions available to him. I won’t list them all here but the areas covered are as follows:

– General
– Mathematics
– Statistics
– Trigonometry (spelt Trignometry in the app and throughout the help)
– String
– Logical
– Date/time
– Financial

When choosing a function from the toolbar, each item has a blue arrow that, when pressed, provides you with help on that function. Alas though, only if you’re online.

Import tests
As with the word processor, I tried loading in a couple of my existing spreadsheets to see how it would cope with them. One is 1.3Mb big and consists of a few dozen separate worksheets. Much to my surprise, Sheet² loaded it in. A fair chunk of the data on the main sheet was gone and a sheet which only contained a graph was also missing in action (Sheet² doesn’t support graphs).

A more standard spreadsheet that I use (consisting of a couple of worksheets with the main one having about 600 rows of data) came in more or less intact. All that seemed missing were various formatting (mainly colouring) including some conditional formatting (e.g. turn the text in this cell a particular colour if certain conditions are met).

Help
Like its sister app, the help for Sheet² is only available if you’re online which is more of a pain here than in Doc² as it’s more complex to use and, being a spreadsheet, that much less intuitive. For example, I couldn’t work out how to select multiple cells although I was sure it must be possible. This is something you could spend hours trying to figure out by experimentation but a quick check of the online help shows it’s a simple procedure (select a cell then tap and hold on the cell that forms the opposite corner of the area you want to select). This stuff really needs to be available offline in an app of this complexity.

Verdict
I had assumed that both these apps would be roughly equivalent in functionality and polish. Although the spreadsheet is far from perfect, it soon became clear that the word processor seemed some way behind. Clunky interface problems and bugs are evident with only a small amount of use.

I’d feel better about it if it was V1 as rough edges and the odd interface problem is that much more understandable in the first version of an app. However, it’s marked as V3 and that bothers me. I’m usually happy to give developers the benefit of the doubt, ignoring minor problems and missing features but given it’s supposedly the third major version, it does cause more concern. It doesn’t bode well, if there are such obvious problems at this stage.

As for capability, I think there are broadly two main types of user for these apps. The first may want a word processor and/or spreadsheet on their iPhone for those times they are away from their computers and need to start writing a document with a little formatting or to play around with some figures.

The other type of user will want to be able to exchange Word and Excel documents with others with no loss or change to the contents. This second type will be disappointed with these apps. In my tests, when importing both simple and more complex files, I found the loss of formatting and (in some cases) data to be unacceptable. ‘Round tripping’ them (starting on PC, editing on iPhone then passing back to PC) can’t be recommended unless they’re pretty basic or you don’t mind losing some formatting.

If you’re the first type of user who wants a couple of word processor and spreadsheet apps that allow you to create and edit basic documents offline while travelling, you’re likely to find Doc² and Sheet² offer enough functionality to suit your needs. However, the more advanced user needing to deal with more complex or critical files may well want to wait until the exterminators have been in to deal with the bugs and a healthy dose of polish has been applied.

Doc²
Version reviewed: V3.0.1
Category: Productivity
Developer: Byte Squared
Current Price: £1.79
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch

Sheet²
Version reviewed: V3.0
Category: Business
Developer: Byte Squared
Current Price: £1.79
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch

This caught my eye for a couple of reasons. To begin with, it’s the first iPhone app I’ve tried that’s been produced by a grown up company. No offence to the developers of the previous apps but they are small (often one man) teams. Autodesk, on the other hand, is a big corporation. Not just that but it makes its money producing professional grade software. AutoCAD is one of theirs, the first choice of architects and engineers all over the world. 3DS Max is software used by hundreds of games developers and special effects houses. Although they dip their toes in retail with a few consumer packages, pro’ level software costing thousands is very much their business. I was curious to see how they’d apply their experience to the iPhone OS.

Secondly, the screenshots suggested a slickly designed interface – something I always look for. Third, a couple of the listed features sounded particularly interesting. Not only did it boast “a variety of customizable brushes, including pencil, paint, texture and airbrush” but “all the tools simulate pressure sensitivity, giving each variable width and transparency that takes mobile sketching to a new level.”

C’mon, how could I not take a look?

In the interests of full disclosure I should start off by mentioning that I worked for Autodesk several years ago but I no longer have any affiliation with them and nothing to gain by giving them a favourable (or unfavourable) review if it isn’t deserved. With that said, let’s get on with it…

SketchBook Mobile is a cut down version of the desktop ‘SketchBook Pro’. I have to admit I’m unfamiliar with this software (never even heard of it before now) but a look at its description on the Autodesk website suggests it’s somewhat like Corel Painter but tailored more for Artists and Designers to use for electronic sketching as opposed to full blown Painting. With this in mind, it makes particular sense to produce a version that Artists can carry around with them for those times when inspiration strikes.

Interestingly, Autodesk say of the mobile version, “It uses the same engine as Autodesk® SketchBook® Pro painting and drawing software delivering much of the same power and functionality as the desktop application.” This suggests the guts behind the software has been worked on for years meaning it’s tried, tested, (relatively) bug free, and proven. This should give it advantages over the typical small developer working on their own painting apps from scratch, with very limited resources, little testing and the design vision of only one or two people. This last factor can equally be a good or bad thing of course, depending on the individuals involved.

EULA if you want to
When I first started the app, I was surprised to be presented with a EULA (End User License Agreement) to either accept or reject. Actually it was just a link to the Apple EULA. After, ahem, reading that I tapped ‘I agree’ and was given the option to take a Quick Tour. This turns out to be a series of screens explaining the basic controls and by the end, you’ll be ready to dive straight in.

As with similar apps, Your work is held in a Gallery screen where you can select an existing picture to work on, create a new blank one, import a photo, export your painting (to the camera roll or by emailing it) or, finally, delete the selected picture. Creating a new drawing automatically moves you into the painting screen.

Painting Screen
SketchBook (assume I mean ‘Mobile’ rather than ‘Pro’ from now on) features a number of different controls from those of its rivals. First, the four corners are reserved for some commonly used functions, with a double tap activating them. Starting at the top left and working clockwise, they are: clear layer, fit to view, redo and undo (which is limited to 10 steps). These controls work really well and having them activated with a double tap in the corner means they are never used by accident. I hope other developers shamelessly steal this idea to improve their interfaces. I’d suggest Autodesk rotate these functions as the Artist rotates the screen to allow him to continue tapping in the same relative corner as he works on the picture in different orientations.

There’s also the now traditional (for most painting apps) tap and hold gesture to activate the colour picker. SketchBook’s twist on this is that the picker’s offset from your finger allowing you to see exactly where the colour is being picked up. This makes perfect sense but hadn’t occurred to me before seeing it in action.

There’s a little symbol in the bottom centre of the screen that you tap to bring up the Tools menu (which Autodesk seem to call the Marking Menu for some reason). I found this somewhat reminiscent of the system used in Inspire. I did find the implementation in that app to be consistently annoying – the menu would pop up at inopportune times and just generally get in the way. The painting menu in SketchBook is an altogether slicker and more comprehensive affair. It took a little time to get used to tapping the symbol to bring up the tools as the area you tap is away from where the menu appears. I’m not saying that’s wrong (it does mean the menu doesn’t pop up unnecessary) but I did find it a little clunky and never felt fully comfortable with it even though it did become easier over time.

Marking (Tools) Menu
This is arranged in a ring around the central width control. To change the brush/eraser size you tap in the middle of the control and drag left to decrease or right to increase the brush width. This works nicely but as you drag, the width is only shown as a number which is difficult to relate to. It would be much more intuitive if there was a visual indication with a circular outline appearing on screen, changing as you adjust the width.

The eight tools are arranged, compass like, around the central control. In the ‘north’ position is the pencil tool, then moving clockwise, you get the airbrush, paintbrush, eraser, brushes screen, layer editor, colour selection and symmetry.

Eraser
Given that this app features layers, it’s necessary to have an eraser tool. You’ve the option of a hard or soft edged eraser, chosen in the Brush screen. The problem is that SketchBook doesn’t remember your selection. The default is hard edged and that’s what you’ll get each time you choose the eraser from the tools menu. To get the alternative, you have to select it in the brush screen. Surely it would be better to be able to park whichever version you preferred in the Tool menu so it was more easily available?

As I was using it, I found myself wanting the eraser to have an indication on screen of its size so I’d know where the edges were. I think this would largely be solved with a circle being drawn on screen showing the eraser’s edges. This wouldn’t help much when it was small (i.e. smaller than your finger) but the problem tended to occur when it was larger and I didn’t want to accidentally erase parts of my drawing.

Brushes Screen
Many users of painting apps like to have a good selection of different brushes to choose from and SketchBook delivers. At the top of the screen is a preview of the brush stroke. Directly below this is a row of icons called the ‘Marking Menu Brushes’ along with a Fill bucket. Under that row is a grid of 20 different tools.

This screen puzzled me for a while. My initial assumption when I saw it was that you choose the type of brush you want to appear on the Marking Menu from the main selection, perhaps by dragging it onto the top row. Nope. The brushes that appear on the marking menu stay the same. If you choose a different tool here and hit ‘Back’ it’s the one you’ll be painting with. Enable the marking menu and choose one of the three available and it’ll change back to that. If you want to select another after that you have to go back into the brush screen to do it.

There’s nothing really wrong with this arrangement except I can’t help feeling my initial assumption was preferable. Wouldn’t it be better to select which brush you want to paint with, the pencil you draw with and which airbrush to have as your default? But things aren’t that simple and it turns out the ‘Edit’ button allows you to make some minor changes to the default brushes.

Fill
Before I get to editing brushes, I should take a small diversion to mention that the Fill tool is selected from the brush menu. As it’s not something you need to use that often, being tucked away in here seems fair enough.

For anyone most familiar with fill tools from other iPhone painting apps, you’ll probably be surprised at how this one works. Rather than just fill the whole layer as in other apps, this one acts like a flood fill bucket from a desktop app, filling the area outward from where it’s dropped, until it meets a boundary. This means separate areas can be filled with different colours. It does have its limitations though. It only acts on the current layer (i.e. doesn’t stop if it comes across a line on a different layer. It also only fills flat colours rather than having a choice of filling as a gradient as you might expect in a desktop application. Even so, it’s a pleasant surprise to have this added functionality on a basic tool.

Edit Brushes
On the Brushes screen is a tempting button on the top right called ‘Editor’. Diving into this opens up the possibilities you have with the brushes even further. If the 20 or more brushes weren’t enough for you, this screen allows the chance to tweak them. Before I go into it too much, let me take another slight but necessary diversion.

Simulated Pressure Sensitivity
When I read one of the features of SketchBook Mobile was that it simulated pressure sensitivity, I became very interested. During my time with Brushes, there were a few moments when I thought something very clever was going on under the hood as it felt as if the app somehow took the pressure of my finger into account. That was clearly impossible but it did lead to the notion that if Apple allowed developers access to the finger’s contact patch information in the SDK, a passable pseudo pressure effect might be possible. Reading about SketchBook’s simulated pressure caused me to wonder. Had Autodesk somehow gotten access to the contact patch data allowing them to produce this amazing new feature?

In a word, no. Try as I might, pressing my finger onto the screen had little effect on the stroke no matter how hard or soft I pressed. After my initial disappointment I took some time to figure out exactly what this simulated pressure thing of Autodesks is. Select, say, the pencil, make a stroke and you won’t get the uniform line you might expect from other apps. The mark will start thin and grow into the normal sized line, tapering off again at the end. Make a series of swift strokes and they’ll have a different character to slow, deliberate ones. So, what’s going on?

I was frustrated by the apps lack of help or documentation on this, of all areas in the app, as it’s clearly the one that requires it the most. In the absence of any official explanation, I had to experiment myself to try and work it out. Here’s what I found.

Edit Brushes again
In the Edit screen, you’re able to adjust whether the marks are Soft, Solid or Hard. This simply refers to the edge of the stroke dictating how soft or sharp it will be.

Complication starts to creep in with tools to adjust the Radius, Opacity and Spacing of strokes. It seems that these settings are applied to your stroke depending entirely (as far as I could tell) on the speed you make it. Make a quick stroke and not only is the taper of the mark elongated but it’s thickness will be the minimum Radius set and much of its ‘density’ will depend on the minimum opacity. Likewise, make a slow, deliberate stroke and it’s thicker and darker depending on the maximum settings for radius and opacity but with a very short taper.

Once I’d worked this out, it did strike me as a pretty simplistic setup with which to emulate naturalistic strokes. However, it has to be said that, when I put all the technicalities out of my head and simply drew normally, the strokes started to look quite realistic. It started to look (and feel) much more like sketching than with any other app. So, while I still have to wait for better pseudo pressure sensitivity to appear on the iPhone, this is a passable facsimile for the time being.

Any changes you make to a brush in the edit screen stays with it until you adjust it again or reset it back to the factory defaults (found under the ‘?’ button on the painting screen). So, in this way you can change the default ‘marking’ tools somewhat. It’s clearly limited primarily to the thickness and opacity leaving you unable to change the shape of the mark made but I found it surprisingly useful to be able to tweak various brushes.

Layers Editor
A new painting will start with only one layer but opening this screen allows you to add up to five more if you’re running on an iPhone 3GS but only two more on other devices (apparently this limitation also applies to even the most recent iPod Touches). On this screen you can add a new layer, load in a photo as a new layer and rearrange them in the familiar iPhone manner by dragging the three line icon up and down. You can also merge the current layer with the one below and turn each layer’s visibility on and off.

Considering this is the third and most recent painting app I’ve seen that incorporates layers and especially since it comes from a big software company, it’s surprising that this implementation of layers is easily the most crude. It doesn’t hold a candle to the style used in Brushes let alone the slick 3D interface of Layers. Don’t get me wrong, it works but where the rest of the app shows a hefty dollop of design both in functionality and visual appeal, the layers editor seems rudimentary in comparison. It leaves the definite impression of being something of an afterthought.

Colour Screen
This is an interesting take on colour selection. When you launch this screen you’re shown a grid of swatches (i.e. pre-selected colours). Tapping on one selects it and returns you to the painting screen. If you want a wider choice, hit the ‘Wheel’ button and you’re given a colour wheel to play with. This is a little different to the wheels you’ll find in most painting apps. It features an outer ring showing all the hues with a diamond inside for the saturation (left/right) and brightness (up/down). Below it are RGB (Red, Green, Blue) sliders to allow precise colour selection should you need it. This seems a little unnecessary on an iPhone but given that it’s there, it strikes me that sliders aren’t the best way to input precise numbers.

Pressing ‘Back’ from here takes you to the painting screen with the ‘Swatches’ button returning you to the colour grid. Here, you can keep your brand new colour for future use by dragging it from the bar at the top of the screen into any of the swatches in the grid. This is something I’ve wanted since I tried my first iPhone Painting app and, although I’d welcome more slots to use, it works well.

Symmetry
This is a unique tool among serious iPhone painting apps in my experience. Turning this on means all your strokes will be mirrored around the vertical centre of your canvas. Paint a line of the right hand side of the screen and it will be replicated in reverse on the left.

Although it seemed a little odd to begin with, this could prove more useful than you might expect. Drawing a stylised or cartoon face is made easier but I can’t see much use for it with a serious portrait as you’re unlikely to draw a subject straight on and people don’t have perfectly symmetrical faces.

During the whole of my time with SketchBook, I was convinced it didn’t do symmetry in the other direction (i.e. horizontally). Then, watching the promo video (at the end of this review), showed it being done. The trick is to turn your device to landscape orientation before turning on symmetry. Easy when you know how.

Drawing and Painting
Rummaging through a new box of tools is fine but it’s only when you use them that you find out how good they are at getting the job done. So, following my usual habit, I chose to draw a picture of a famous figure electing, on this occasion, Ricky Gervais (I thought it particularly worth mentioning who it was meant to be as I didn’t have time to get the best likeness in the world). The painting tools available in SketchBook are broadly similar to the other painting apps I’ve reviewed (those without a blend tool at least) so, rather than create a painting as I have for previous apps of this type, I thought I’d play to its strengths and concentrate on a pencil drawing this time. In the real world, my favoured medium is pencil on paper – it’s where I produce my best work and I slowly found myself favouring that style while experimenting with SketchBook.

During the later stages, I found one particular brush to be extremely useful. It features a series of thin, parallel lines similar to the sort of mark I’d normally make to shade a drawing. When you overlay a series of strokes such as this at differing angles, you produce cross hatching. The same marks could be produced ‘manually’ but it would be a slow, laborious process. Having a pre-made brush that replicates this is a great idea and makes it easily my favourite non standard brush to be found in any painting app I’ve tried. I should say the list isn’t long as I rarely find a use for the secondary brushes provided.

Once I forgot the technicalities of the software I found that sketching really comes naturally in SketchBook. I would concentrate on one area of the drawing, zooming in to add some detail, then when I looked at the picture as a whole, I’d be surprised at how much it looked like a real pencil drawing.

As with a number of Painting apps, Sketchbook doesn’t cater for ‘landscape’ orientation (let alone upside down). This never ceases to baffle me and I can only hope it’s fixed in a future update.

Zooming
As you’d expect, this is easily achieved via a pinch but SketchBook gives you the most generous range I’ve yet seen – from 20% right in to 2500% which I found very useful for working on small details.

Performance
SketchBook’s the most laggy painting app I’ve tried. On the one hand, given that I have a 1st generation iPod Touch, you might expect it to be slow but on the other, running on my old hardware means it’s limited to 3 layers (rather than the 6 of a 3GS) and the resolution is clamped to 600×400 (as opposed to 1024×682 on the latest hardware). So, given I’m already paying the price for using a slow device with cut down features, shouldn’t I expect it to run well? The question comes down to ‘is it still usable?’ and I’d have to say a definite yes but I did have to modify my behaviour by often waiting to check the results of my strokes before continuing.

Help
Although you’re given a quick tour to get you started and a slightly more extensive help screen inside, there were a couple of areas I needed detailed help on and wasn’t available. I searched for a manual online to no avail. As I mentioned earlier, help is most noticeably absent (and needed) on how the Brush screen works, the effects of editing them and an overview of the simulated pressure sensitivity.

I’d suggest someone with no previous experience of the desktop application be put in charge of writing the Help. While little is needed for most of the application, the lack of any explanation in several key areas leaves users to fend for themselves which is pretty unforgivable.

Exporting
You can email a PNG file directly from SketchBook or save a copy into your camera roll. With my drawing, I found the former was much the best option as saving to JPG (with its compression) resulted in much of the subtle shading in my portrait being lost. This won’t apply to all work of course but it does hi light the possible problems you might come across with pencil work.

It would be nice if there were more export (and import) options in SketchBook. Given that it uses layers, the ideal would be for it to export (and import) PSD files. This Photoshop format would allow all layer and transparency information to be kept in a lossless file. Ideally, all painting apps would adopt this convention, allowing users to move their work between them to take advantage of their strengths. I can see myself sketching in SketchBook then moving into Inspire to paint. It would require somewhere for all apps to import files from (email attachments, perhaps) but it would be a welcome addition.

Verdict
You can certainly tell this is the direct descendent of a bigger desktop application. In most areas the pedigree of its thoroughly designed and tested code gives it a polish that’s often lacking in similar apps. But in one or two areas it’s surprisingly hum drum – its implementation of layers being the obvious example.

I initially approached SketchBook as another Painting app. Viewed in that way it suffers. It doesn’t have the range of tools PhotoForge has or the paint simulation of Inspire. But, it has the best box of pencils of the lot and viewed in that way, it’s impressive. I’d suggest Autodesk expand on this by introducing effects for different grades of pencil (and charcoal?) and differing textures of paper. Specialise in that area and SketchBook will really cut out its own niche in the Painting app genre – actually, it would create its own Drawing genre.

I will head back to Inspire and its fabulous blending abilities when I feel the need for colour. SketchBook, I’ll save for times when I just want to sketch. It’s the best pencil simulator currently to be had on the iPhone and until Apple allows developers access to the finger contact patch info’, or Corel release a version of Painter for the iPhone, it’s likely to remain so.

Here’s a video of SketchBook Mobile in action

Click here to view the embedded video.

Version 1.1 update
I don’t usually cover updates to apps I’ve already reviewed (who’d have time to eat or sleep if they did that?) but I thought I’d make an exception with the recent V1.1 update to SketchBook Mobile as there’re a couple of aspects to it of interest.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have experienced the little thrill that occurs whenever you connect to your network and a red badge pops up over the ‘App Store’ icon telling you an update or two is available. It’s a bit like a mini Christmas with bug fixes equating to clothes from your Granny (necessary but boring) and new features being the Buzz Lightyear (the big, flashy electronic gizmo that you’ve been looking forward to for months). Oooh, I love updates.

When you dive in to the App Store, up comes a screen listing the changes. Here’s what it said for the SketchBook update (I always grab these so I can check them in detail later).

Does anything strike you about this (apart from the missing icon – I’ve been getting that sometimes lately)? Not exactly packed with useful detail or explanation, is it? Take that first line for example:

“Patented gesture-based marking menus”

What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean? It might as well say “Squiggle flak trumpet sink” for all the sense it makes without explanation. In fairness, most of the rest of the items are less baffling. I get that I can now email a picture in the PSD format, delete a layer or change its opacity and little in the way of help is needed for them.

But some things require more detail. How do I Stipple (and, indeed, many users won’t even know what the term means) and how does the double tap to exit the Brush or Layers screen work? I have to say it’s seems to be in keeping with the original lack of relevant documentation that I mentioned in the main review. Whoever’s responsible for this has forgotten the user who’s unfamiliar with the desktop app and the new features. It’s like he (or she) has been using them for months and forgotten that they’ll be brand new to the users when the update appears.

The tutorial in the app doesn’t mention the new features but I did eventually find reference to the ‘Patented gesture-based marking menus’ in the ‘Help’ screen under a section titled ‘Sketching’. It turns out this refers to a way to quickly access certain tools. You have to press the little circle (marking menu) icon with one finger and use another to tap-drag in the direction of the tool you want from the ‘marking menu’. So, to activate the eraser for example, you’d drag in a South-East direction.

I’m not sure if I’d use this much – after a short time with it, I found it a little awkward but it’s quite possible this will change with practice and there’s always the option to turn it off. I’m puzzled that it’s described as ‘Patented’ as there’s a very similar method employed in the Inspire app which was released earlier but then I’m no expert in patent law.

I was pleased to see a feature I mentioned in the review appear (I’ve no illusions it was down to my mentioning it though). I wanted there to be visual indication of the brush size as you change it and that has now appeared in the update. One slight problem however. It’s placed at the centre of the screen – under your finger in other words, making it tricky to see small brushes. The problem is easily overcome by moving your finger down the screen and dragging it left/right from there but I’d have preferred the indicator to be placed where the numbers appear.

It’s worth mentioning how the double tap feature works as it wasn’t obvious. When you’re in the Brush or Layer screens, you can double tap on any brush (or layer) to quickly select it and get you back to the painting screen. It probably sounds obvious now but without explanation, it’s not clear where you’re meant to double tap on the screen for this to work.

The only other feature that might need a little explanation is the ability to import photos that are in landscape orientation. It’s pretty obvious except it’ll be helpful to know there’s a setting that allows you to decide which direction to turn them on import. This can be found via the ‘Prefs’ screen under then ‘?’ button.

So, a decent update with some interesting new features but please, Autodesk, add a bit of detail and explanatory text for the next update. Your much smaller competitors are putting you to shame in this area.

While I’m here there something that’s been bugging me since I wrote the original review. It strikes me as odd that the sketch Autodesk use to represent the app e.g. in the title screen (i.e. the red robot character) seems to have actually been created in the desktop application. I’ve no doubt that a similar sketch could be produced in SketchBook Mobile so why not create and use that instead? I’d have thought that using the current image is, technically, false advertising as it wasn’t produced using the mobile software which its presence implies. Still, not a big deal, I guess.

Here’s a video showing the update in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

SketchBook Mobile
Version reviewed: V1.0 (Main review) & V1.1
Category: Entertainment
Developer: Autodesk Inc.
Current Price: £1.79
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch

So, next came Layers with its unique (at the time) implementation of layers. The main thing that bugged me was the lack of a blend/smudge tool (which PhotoForge had included). Most recently, I looked at the original serious painting app, Brushes. It now included its own version of layers and had a very nice, if difficult to describe, ‘feel’. But, annoyingly, it also lacked a blend tool.

So, imagine my interest when I came across ‘Inspire’ whose key feature was, according to the developer, KiwiPixel’s description on the App Store, that it “simulates wet paint on a canvas, allowing amazing blending effects.” This I had to try.

First, I should probably explain why a simple blend tool has taken on such importance. It’s entirely based on my experience with the painting apps. PhotoForge happened to have what it calls (accurately as it turns out) a ‘Smudge’ tool. While this is crude compared to Inspire’s more sophisticated blending, it was good enough to help smooth the transition between two colours or tones. However, when I used Layers and Brushes I realised how much extra work it was without a tool of this sort. With all the needless extra taps and brush strokes required, it meant a typical painting would take appreciably longer to complete.

Who’d have thought it would be so significant? Not me but the fact was that, without one, smoothing the join between two colours forced me to work the way the software wanted rather than it working the way I wanted – a pet hate of mine. Inspire promises to not only end this frustration but potentially go much further. First, though, I had to familiarise myself with it’s various screens and options.

Main Menu
After firing up the app, you get a short intro sequence showing the Inspire and KiwiPixel logos. As quick as it is, it would be nice to click through it but, unfortunately, this isn’t possible as the app uses the time to pre-load large amounts of data and crunch some big numbers in order for it to perform as well as it does on the limited iPhone hardware. Following that, up pops the Main Menu. Here you have entries for Gallery, Options, Info and Tips & Tricks.

Tips & Tricks
This section lists ten areas of help covering such items as how to flick through the settings, duplicating paintings and where to submit feature ideas. This is a very useful section and one I wish more developers would include within their app. In fairness, not all apps need much help but in one such as this with a quirky interface and unfamiliar options, the help is necessary and welcome.

Info
This screen simply shows the version number as well as a link to the developer’s website. It also encourages you to email your best paintings off to the developer so they can be included in their online gallery. The email address is shown but isn’t ‘live’. However, that’s not a problem as the process is automated elsewhere in the app.

Options
Here you get a handful of general options including one to select an offset allowing you to paint in an area just above and to the left or right of your finger. Although I’ve been curious to use an offset before, after trying this, I tended not to use it. I found it just felt more natural to paint where my finger touched the screen. Good to have the option available though.

The next few options allow you to display location with an onscreen cursor, bring up the Painting Menu by tapping the corners of the screen and have ‘flickable settings’. This last one allows you to swipe left and right while in the painting options screens rather than have to back out to the menu and go back in via the Painting Menu – you’ll want to set this to ‘On’, trust me.

Also on this screen, you’ll come across another type of help that’s scattered throughout the options screens. This is in the form of ‘i’ (for information) buttons which, when pressed, provide specific help on the control they’re associated with. I found this invaluable and, again, I’d recommend other developers follow suit.

Gallery & Browsing
This is where all your work’s stored. From here you can get back to the main menu, create a new canvas or tap on an existing painting to ‘Browse’ it. In the Browse view, as well as buttons along the top to take you back to the Gallery and start Painting, there’s a toolbar along the bottom. This includes icons to save the image to photos, email the painting, move back and forward to view your other work, duplicate painting and, finally, delete the current image.

They’re not big problems by any means but it seems slightly odd that you can’t simply swipe left and right to move to the next painting along. Also, as I found with Brushes, I can’t see a reason not to be able to zoom into a painting in Browse mode but Inspire also doesn’t offer this.

Painting mode
Hitting the ‘Paint’ button moves you from Browse to Painting mode. When I looked at Brushes, I mentioned that there was little visual difference between its view and painting modes leading to useless strokes being placed in viewing mode. Here the difference is more obvious as browse has conventional toolbars, whereas they fade away when you move into painting mode.

Painting Menu
Where other painting apps have toolbars along the top and bottom of the screen, KiwiPixel has come up with something a little different for Inspire. When you’re in Painting mode, tapping on the centre of the screen brings up the Painting Menu. This is a cluster of tools arranged in a square shape. Starting from the top left and working clockwise, you get Fill, Colour Picker, Colour Selection, Redo, Brush Usage, Brush Selection, Return to Browse Mode and Undo.

Tapping on any of these tools either performs the action or takes you to its screen, depending on the icon. One of the application’s Hints and Tips suggests a way to speed up use of the Painting Menu. When it’s activated the icons appear in the centre of the screen and spread outward, forming the ‘box’. However, once you start to become familiar with the locations of the tools, it’s possible to tap on where they’ll be before they get there. The developer calls this a “quick painting menu selection”. For example to quickly undo a stroke, you’d tap the centre of the screen then immediately tap a centimetre or so to the left to press undo and finally tap back in the centre to dismiss the Painting Menu. With practice, this should become one quick, fluid movement.

I must say that during the several days I was using the app, I didn’t get up to speed enough to be able to take advantage of this quick selection method. I was stuck in the slow lane, peering at the screen to find the icon then prodding away carefully. I’m sure this quick method will work for many (maybe even me, if I keep at it) but if my experience is anything to judge by, not everyone will find it easy and quick to use, at least in the short term.

As it’s called up with a single tap on the screen, it’s possible that the occasional painting stroke will activate the menu when it isn’t wanted. If you find that happening too often for your liking, there’s the option (in the Main Menu options screen) to only activate it with a tap in the corners of the screen rather than the centre. The idea is that you’ll rarely be painting in a corner so are unlikely to bring it up by accident. The downside is that the ‘quick painting menu selection’ then becomes impossible.

Once I got into my stride with the painting, I did find that the painting menu would appear when it wasn’t wanted. This seemed to happen a lot so I tried setting it to only appear with a tap in the corner. This certainly stops the menu appearing unnecessarily but I found it frustrating as it became awkward to tap in the corner then move my finger to the middle of the screen to tap the tool I wanted then the centre of the screen to dismiss it. So, in the end I turned the option off and settled for living with the painting menu popping up when it wasn’t wanted. I hope the developer either tweaks the workings of the painting menu or offers a more conventional arrangement in the future.

At the moment the Painting Menu only really works in Portrait mode. It appears in Landscape but unrotated thus making it cumbersome (and impossible to use the quick painting menu selection). This is planned to be fixed in a future update. I hope the developer also allows for upside down use (both for Portrait and landscape modes) as I for one, like to use this orientation regularly to get a fresh perspective on the painting.

Well, that’s the Painting Menu, but what of the actual tools?

Fill
Inspire keeps track of the fill colour so when you open the screen, the last fill colour is already chosen. Selecting another is done as you’d expect: tap somewhere within the wheel and adjust the brightness and opacity sliders. In the top right of the colour window is a grid icon. Pressing this takes you into the Grid Palette which can be found both here and in the Colour Selection screen.

Unlike all the other painting apps I’ve tried, Inspire keeps swatches of colours so you can easily reuse them but I have to admit to finding this initially baffling. I’d assumed it was a case of my manually adding the colours I wanted to the palette but try as I might, no end of double tapping, swiping, sliding or magical incantation would add the colours.

The developer was able to set me straight. It actually works in a much simpler way. When you pick a new colour and press ‘Done’, it’s added to the palette of 80 swatches. If it’s the same as an existing colour, it’s not added. Simple. The developer went on to explain the positioning of the colours.

“They are sorted in order starting from the most recently selected colours. So if you go into the colour picker, select a green colour, for example, then press Done, next time you go into the colour picker you should see the green colour at the beginning of the previously used colours grid in the top-left square. If a colour that is already in the grid is selected, it gets removed from its current spot and moved to the top – you should never see duplicate colours in the grid.”

I was curious to know if there was a different set of 80 colours for each painting but quickly discovered the same palette grid applies to all paintings. I’m in two minds as to whether I’d prefer a different palette for each painting or not. I’m currently erring on the side of not as I didn’t really make use of it during my painting. I found I changed colour so often (tweaking its opacity counts as a different colour), that colours tended to slide off the end of the palette grid very quickly. I’d prefer the option to reserve, say, the bottom third of the grid for my own choice of colours. I’d find it very useful to be able to drag a colour from the changeable palette into my permanent one. The developer is considering this suggestion for a possible update in the future.

Colour Picker
This acts much as you’d expect from other painting apps with the exception of how you bring it up. It’s one of the tools in the Painting Menu and can only be enabled from there. I have to admit I really missed the ability to bring it up with a simple tap and hold gesture as most other painting apps now feature. So much so, that if I had one wish to change the app, it would be to add this ability. In a single stroke a healthy chunk of the frustration I had using the Painting Menu would disappear. I don’t think it would interfere with the current tools at all and would just add that functionality for those of us who prefer it – come KiwiPixel, pretty please?

Colour Selection
This is identical to the fill colour screen with the exception that you are shown the ‘old’ and ‘new’ colours whereas in the fill colour screen, it just displays the current colour.

When I first saw the colour screen, there was something about it that bothered me a little. Something that made it seem a bit old fashioned somehow. It soon struck me what it was. Transparency is indicated by a chequer pattern. But, unlike other Painting apps that use the Photoshop style chequer, the pattern chosen for Inspire reminds me of the type used by drawing applications of old such as Deluxe Paint and Animator Pro.

These worked back when your palette of colours was a heady 256 (and sometimes less). So, the result was that there’s a slight visual incongruity between a colour wheel that clearly shows thousands of colours and what looks like a limited palette of 256. This isn’t a big problem of course (it’s not even a small problem) but I have to admit it did continually nag at me throughout my time with Inspire. Admittedly it’s probably only me that will be bothered at all by this.

Brush Usage
Having an app that allows you to play with realistic blending, requires more sophisticated options than normal so it’s no surprise that Inspire includes some specialist controls.

The Brush Usage screen is where you’ll find such controls as ‘Paint Load Amount’, ‘Pressure’ and ‘Automatic Reload’. Not the sort of thing most users will be familiar with. It’s here that the little help screens come into their own, explaining the functions of all the weird and wonderful buttons and sliders.

So, for example, you learn that ‘Paint Load Amount’ alters the length of a stroke before it runs out of paint. Reduce this slider and your stroke will be shorter. Lengthen it and it’ll go on that much longer. I tended to keep this at the maximum length and, indeed, wished there was an option for an infinite amount of paint but the developer isn’t keen on this as it goes against the principle that Inspire simulates real paint which is difficult to argue with.

The opposite of this is having a paint load of zero – a ‘Dry Brush’ in other words. What use is a brush with no paint? Plenty. In real life, if you move a dry brush through an existing stroke what would you expect to happen? The Brush would drag some of the paint it runs through with it, spreading it out as it goes. And this is exactly what happens in Inspire. I’ll come back to this when I talk about what it’s like to paint with.

If you have the Palette Knife selected as your brush, there’s the option to set ‘Alternate Mode’ on. This allows you to scratch away at your painting as you could do in real life. Why would you want to? Mostly to get pure white hi-lights. This is as close as you’ll get to an eraser in Inspire and it might be useful to be able to alter the size but it’s a nice addition as it stands.

Brush Selection
If you set the Main Menu ‘Flickable Settings’ option to ‘On’, you can swipe back and forth from the Brush Usage Screen. To its right is Colour Selection and to the left is the Brush Selection screen. Unlike the previous screen the controls on this one will seem reassuringly familiar. The first one selects between four brushes: Flat, Round, Fan and Palette Knife. The second is a slider to adjust the brush size.

I couldn’t help feeling both the Brush Usage and Brush Selection screens would benefit greatly from a redesign. For example, if you’ve chosen a round brush, there’s no need for a rotation control. Also, the alternate mode option only applies when the palette knife is selected.

When you have, say, the chisel brush selected and set a rotation of 45 degrees, the indicator changes to reflect this. However, the almost identical looking size indicator on the Brush Select screen remains upright. This seems odd and it strikes me that combining the rotation and size controls would not only avoid the confusion but also save space too.

From a graphical design point of view the Brush Usage screen suffers from a bit of odd alignment of some of the elements. You may think this is being picky but a slick graphic design (or even just a tidy up) would add to the clarity and usability of the software.

Actually, I’ve got a feeling that with some thought and a re-design, both these screens could probably be combined into one.

Zooming and Panning
In a satisfyingly familiar way, you can zoom in and out by using a pinch. Panning is a somewhat less predictable affair as it has to be done as part of a zoom. To quote the help text on panning, “touch two fingers on the screen then use one of them to move around.” Brushes uses a very similar idea but pulls it off perfectly. The version you encounter in Inspire, feels more like the clunky prototype.

It starts to become particularly irksome if you want to pan more than one screens worth as you have to repeat the two finger zoom and pan again. Otherwise, you’ll do a pan then, without thinking, try to pan further with another one finger drag which results in an unwanted brush stroke. In the end though, I found the simplest thing was to pan using a two finger gesture. I hope this gets cleaned up in the future as it has a way to go before it becomes the seamless experience it should be.

Painting
As ever, the heart of a Painting app is, naturally, the Painting. An app could have the slickest interface in the world but if the painting’s crap, what’s the point? Likewise, its interface might be full of awkward design and poorly implemented controls but paint like a dream. Which side does Inspire come down on?

I found it took me some time to really get my head around the Painting in Inspire. Not because it’s hard to do but more because it’s such a different experience to the other Painting apps I’ve used until now. Where they replicated the experience of applying colour to a surface in a very rudimentary way, Inspire simulates paint more realistically than I might have imagined possible on the iPhone. A few simple examples soon made me realise this was something different.

Make a brushstroke and it gradually peters out of paint, thinning as it goes. Wow.

Turn on the dry brush option, zig zag it through your first stroke and watch the paint being spread backwards and forwards. Double wow.

Choose the palette knife, turn on alternate mode and scratch away some paint, leaving the gleaming white canvas shining through. Triple wow with sugar on top.

Let’s get this out of the way now – I luurrve painting with this thing.

It really feels like you can ‘work’ the paint in Inspire. In other apps, you plop the paint on and it’s instantly ‘set’. Any other marks you make on top of it have no effect but in Inspire making a stroke involves not just the current colour but any and all colours that it comes in contact with. In this way, the painting feels organic and workable, allowing the Artist to approach it much more like a real painting.

Mix yellow with red and you get orange, just as you would in the real world. Attempt the same thing in the only other Painting app I’ve tried with something similar (the smudge tool in PhotoForge) and you get a dirty smudge. There are limits to the colour mixing abilities of Inspire but these are down to the RGB colour model used and applies to similar desktop apps. Even so, after using other iPhone Painting apps, the blending and colour mixing possible in Inspire are a revelation.

So, after the initial fireworks of mixing colours and pushing paint around, what’s it like to create a real picture using it? Interesting, surprising, experimental and fun.

I opted to paint a picture of UK comedian Jo Brand as she has an interesting face that I thought would particularly suit blending. I was right but found the work went through several stages starting off pretty badly. This was a combination of a couple of things, not least the fact that I began with the intention of producing a caricature but changed my mind halfway through and aimed for a more ‘straight’ portrait. The change in the proportions were tricky to fix and I found myself wishing Inspire would allow me to scale the picture’s height, which, of course it doesn’t. I also thought it would have helped me fix things if layers had been available but they’re not and I can live without them.

The other main problem I had with the portrait was down to me learning Inspire as I went. What was possible and how to use the tools takes a little time to learn and I think less experienced users are likely to find things somewhat confusing. But time spent experimenting is rewarded with some great effects and surprising techniques.

For example, it dawned on me there’d be a value in underpainting with Inspire. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, underpainting is a technique used (especially in Oils) where an underlying colour is applied and thinner washes of a different colour are laid on over the top. The result is a combination of the second colour with the underpainting partially showing through. This is often used in portraiture where the underlying tissue affects the appearance where the skin is thin – around the eyes, for example.

Although I guess I could apply colour in thin (i.e. fairly transparent) strokes to try and replicate the traditional use of underpainting, I discovered a different technique worked better here. I found the fully opaque flesh tone brush strokes mixed in a little with the underlying canvas colour (blue in this case) creating a nice effect. I was learning as I went on the portrait so didn’t have the chance to fully explore the technique but this unexpected finding shows how flexible Inspire’s painting simulation might be.

This blending also results in paintings with a unique look compared to other painting apps. There’s a temptation to overdo it and smooth everything out until it looks artificial (and I think I may have gone a touch too far with the portrait) but as with all tools, it’s up to the user to apply his skill and experience to work out the best way to use it. After I finished with the portrait I had a second go with a quick sketch of an apple. I think this is a definite improvement and shows Inspire is flexible enough to allow for experimentation and improvement.

Where other apps offer several brushes to choose from, in practice, I’ve found them to be pretty similar. However, the difference between the 4 (well, 4.5 if you include the palette knife’s alternate mode) brushes in Inspire does result in noticeably different effects. Although I tended to stick with the round brush most of the time, there were definite occasions when the use of the other brushes was called for. I don’t recall this happening as much with the previous painting apps I’ve used.

Given the sophistication of what Inspire’s doing, it runs very well. There were times when a series of quick strokes did lag a tiny bit but not to the degree where it bothered me (and you can probably tell how fussy I am). I should also note I was running on a 1st generation iPod Touch which, by current standards seems positively steam powered, making its performance doubly impressive.

Trouble in paradise
As advanced as its painting is, I was continually frustrated by other aspects of Inspire, not least the painting menu. I’m all for new ideas and innovation but when there are proven, reliable methods for something as fundamental as presenting the tools to the user, my vote goes to the tried and tested. Ok, so maybe it will suit me better with more practice but for the moment it’s a bit of a pain to use. I really hope this is at least tweaked to be less of an obstacle to painting. This is especially true of the colour picker and, as mentioned before, my one wish for the next update would be to include the ‘tap and hold’ gesture (as seen in Brushes and Layers) to bring up the colour picker.

My second wish would be for brush presets. Given all the options available, it can be relatively time consuming switching from one brush setup to another. I think it’s screaming out for the ability to create user defined presets, giving quick access to favourite sets of brushes. If this can be implemented in an elegant way that allows quick switching between setups, it’ll be a major boost to workflow. Happily, the developer has indicated that this feature will be considered.

Exporting
Inevitably, at some point you’ll want to transfer your painting to your PC. With Inspire you can save it to the camera roll and email from there. Also, it’s possible to email directly from the ‘Browse’ view. By default, the ‘To’ field is filled in with the developers contact address to send your picture for inclusion in their online gallery but you can, of course, change that for your own email address to send it to yourself.

The blending in Inspire makes you feel like you’re working at a higher resolution than normal but the developer assures me it’s the same old native iPhone res’ of 320×480. In the present version of Inspire there’s no way to get a copy of your painting at a higher resolution. However, the developer is working on that feature for the next version. This will use a free to download ‘Inspire Exporter’ application that will be available for both Windows and Mac. This will allow output resolutions from 1 to 6 times the original resolution, producing images up to 1920×2880.

The developer also tells me that future updates will include the ability to open an image from your Photos to use as a starting point (instead of a blank canvas), different canvas sizes and more types of paint brushes.

Natural Media
I berated the developers of both Layers and Brushes for using the term ‘Natural Media’ to describe their apps as I don’t think they can justifiably be described in that way. It shows admirable restraint on the part of KiwiPixel that they don’t make the same mistake even when their application arguably merits the term. Still, given it’s a registered trademark of Corel, I still think it’s wise not to use it.

Verdict
Inspire certainly has its share of rough edges and sharp corners to fix such as bringing up the colour picker, zoom/pan and making the paint menu less aggravating. There are also a couple of features I’d like to see added. Brush presets would speed up work flow and user selected permanent colours in the grid palette would be more useful than the current arrangement.

Despite these gripes, I found using Inspire to be the most satisfying painting experience I’ve yet had on the iPhone. It’s the nearest thing to ‘real’ painting I’ve found on the platform. Using a dry brush to work the paint really feels like I’m involved in an organic, creative process.

As much as I hate to say it for fear of putting anyone off trying it for themselves, It’s not really the painting app I’d recommend to the casual user. They’d likely be a bit baffled by a dry brush and what to do with the palette knife. There’s no doubt that to get the best from Inspire requires experimentation and practice.

To make it easier for novice users, I’d suggest the developer redesign the brush options, perhaps keeping a tweaked version of the current setup as the ‘Pro’ version while offering everyone else a selection of presets familiar from the real world to play with.

Currently, I think ‘real’ Artists (people who already have some experience pushing actual paint around with a real brush) are likely to be the ones best equipped to appreciate its capabilities and get the most from Inspire. This, I think, is the true indication of Inspire’s quality – it’s like the other painting apps are kids crayons and this is a proper set of Artists oils. You can almost smell the linseed oil.

June 2010 update
I don’t usually relate news of updates to the apps I review but I’ve always had a soft spot for Inspire and an email from the developer announcing a sale to mark the recent release of version 2.0 prompted me to take another look.

Since my original review in September 2009, Inspire has been updated a few times with a number of changes and improvements.

– Tap and hold brings up the colour picker – hurrah!
– An eraser
– Option for unlimited paint load
– Onscreen shortcuts to common actions such as dry/wet brush
– You can now rotate your device to any orientation and it changes the position of the tools so they’re in the same relative position – hurrah again!

For anyone tempted to give Inspire a try, now would be an excellent time. To mark the release of V2, KiwiPixel have put Inspire on sale for a limited time, knocking 80% off the usual price. It’s now available for just 59p in the UK (99 cents in America). I’d strongly suggest developers of all other painting apps take advantage of this offer and download a copy today and see how well blending can (and should) be implemented.

Users may also be interested to hear KiwiPixel are currently working on an iPad version of Inspire.

Inspire
Version reviewed: V1.2
Category: Entertainment
Company: KiwiPixel
Current Price: £0.59
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch

Having recently reached it’s first anniversary on the App Store and with strong competition appearing all the time, Brushes was starting to look in danger of falling behind. Now, though, version 2.0 has been released. Has it done enough to retain the iPhone Painting crown?

To bring you up to speed, I’ve previously looked at PhotoForge and Layers. While I was extremely impressed with the implementation of layers (the feature) in Layers (the app), my preference for painting remained PhotoForge. Despite a couple of workflow bottlenecks, the inclusion of a smudge tool makes up for them, allowing me to quickly and easily blend colours together. This cuts down the work and time required for a painting by an appreciable amount.

Anyone looking into the Painting app genre, can’t help but hear about Brushes. It does now carry a bit of baggage around from its growing fame but I wasn’t aware how much effect this had on me until I ran it for the first time.

First impressions
Although this is a review of V2.0, I installed Brushes before the update came out so my first sight of it was V1.1. About three minutes after installation, I found myself checking the developer’s website and reading through the user’s guide (PDF link). Why? Because I couldn’t believe that was it. There were only a couple of screens and a handful of features. I was expecting much more.

This isn’t a fault of the app of course. It’s my own, based on the mental picture I’ve built up through reading about it and hearing the comments left by many of its fervent users. Also, assessing an app on its tool or screen count is a bad way to judge. After all, a pencil is one of the simplest tools in the world but a talented Artist can conjure up a masterpiece filled with breathtaking detail and subtlety with one. The tools an Artist uses are probably the least important factor in how good the end result will be. Still, the better they are, the easier it makes the process. Despite knowing all that, I found myself initially disappointed with what Brushes offered. I had to start again.

So, having made my preconceptions stand in the corner with its back to the room, I returned to Brushes with a fresh eye and a determination to look at it with an open mind.

First impressions… again.
When you first start Brushes, you’re presented with the Gallery view where you’ll discover a few sample paintings. These show a nice range of styles and show what’s possible with the app although the developer may want to add one or two new ones that demonstrate the use of layers. From here you can load an existing photo (to act as a starting point for the painting), export your paintings using a built in web server (more on that later) or press the ‘+’ button to create a blank canvas.

Tapping a picture opens it up in viewing mode where you can see it full screen, move back and forth through the paintings in your gallery or press play to start a slideshow. There’s also an icon to delete the current picture and an option button allowing you to duplicate the painting or save a copy into the camera roll.

I’d be happy to bet that every new user of Brushes has done exactly what I did (several times) and tap away uselessly at the screen here, trying to paint. What you need to do is press the Edit button to actually get painting. I’d suggest making the difference between the view and edit modes visually more obvious, perhaps by displaying the toolbars in a different colour or adding a border around the pictures. I don’t see why you shouldn’t also be able to zoom in and out while in view mode but that’s not a big deal.

Painting Mode
Pressing ‘+’ in the Gallery or ‘Edit’ while in viewing mode, gets you painting. Assuming you started a new one, here you’ll see a plain white canvas with a navigation bar along the top providing a Gallery button and a (rather pointless) ‘Done’ button that merely returns you back to viewing mode. The lower toolbar consists of icons for layers, brush/eraser, undo, redo, eyedropper (colour picker) and colour. I’ll take these functions one at a time in reverse order.

Colour screen
This is dominated by the colour wheel where you simply tap within it to make your selection. Above that are four swatches, the end two providing quick access to black and white. The middle two show your previous and new colours. These display the colours against black and white backgrounds to give an idea how the transparency affects it.

Below the wheel are sliders for brightness and opacity. When you’re happy with your colour choice, pressing ‘Done’ takes you back or ‘Cancel’ returns to the painting screen without changing the colour.

Colour picker
The other way to select colour is by using the ‘eyedropper’ tool (which I prefer to call the colour picker). As with other painting apps, this can be summoned into existence either by tapping the icon or pressing and holding on the painting. When I originally reviewed Layers, I was frustrated about how long you had to hold for the picker to appear (although that’s now been fixed in a recent update) but Brushes works just fine, not requiring too long a hold before it appears.

Undo/Redo
Undo and redo work as you’d expect. The documentation suggests the undo stack isn’t limitless but I didn’t ever find myself running out of undo steps while painting. It should be noted that unlike PhotoForge, the undo stack isn’t kept between sessions so once you’ve gone back into the Gallery screen or quit Brushes, you’ll no longer have the option to undo any strokes made in a previous session. This isn’t unreasonable but with a similar app allowing you to undo from a previous session, it would make a nice addition.

Brushes and Eraser
Next stop along the toolbar is the Brush icon which takes you into the Brushes screen. This has two modes, toggled by pressing either the Brush or Eraser buttons at the top, left of the window.

Brush mode allows you to select your brush type and adjust the stroke’s opacity. You can also change its size either by using the slider or fine tuning it with a tap on the ‘-’ or ‘+’ buttons at either end. The precise size of the brush is shown at the top in pixels. You can increase the size up to 64 pixels wide but the largest I tended to use was only around half of that – anything above that didn’t really allow me to work to the level of detail I wanted. Still, good to know the larger size is there if I need it.

How you change the brush type isn’t immediately obvious but the three dots above the example stroke provide the clue. As with the various pages of the home screen on the iPhone, changing from one to another merely requires a swipe left or right.

For a painting app, and especially one called ‘Brushes’, I was surprised to discover there were only three to choose from: smooth, fine bristly and rough bristly. This doesn’t particularly bother me as I tend to quickly settle on my favourite brush in an app and stick with it (rough bristly in this case). However, judging by the comments I’ve read on various forums, having a wide selection of brushes seems to be an important feature for a great many people. This has always puzzled me as it’s what you do with the strokes that has the greatest effect on the end result rather than the type of brush used. The character of the brush largely disappears after a few strokes. Even so, it does seem a bit mean having such a small selection to choose from.

Pressing the eraser icon changes the screen over to the second mode. Unlike the Layers app, the controls for the eraser are beautifully integrated into the same screen as those for the Brushes. Barely a thing changes between the two modes as the controls for one serves the other. Although the example stroke remains much the same, it now displays the strength of the eraser by showing the familiar Photoshop style chequer pattern (indicating transparency). The more powerful the eraser, the more transparent the stroke becomes – brilliantly intuitive.

When you leave this screen while in Eraser mode, the toolbar icon changes to match this showing which mode you are in. It switches back when you return to brush mode.

Layers
This is the second Painting app I’ve looked at with this feature. The first one was ‘Layers’ where I was so impressed by the implementation that I couldn’t imagine it being done any other way. Brushes does it another way. Having a good idea of how long software development takes, I have no doubt that layers have been worked on for Brushes for quite some time and its appearance now is certainly not a direct result of the arrival of the Layers app as many might think. This gives us an interesting opportunity to see how two separate developers tackle the same problem and come up with different designs.

At the top of the screen, the toolbar allows you to import a photo as a new layer and provides a ‘Done’ button to return you to the painting screen (a double tap on a layer does the same). The lower toolbar gives the options to fill a layer with a colour, merge the active layer down with the one below, undo, redo, delete current layer and create a new one.

Where the Layers app presented layers in a 3D display with an animated transition from the painting screen, Brushes cuts abruptly from the painting screen to layers and uses a ‘hand of cards’ metaphor to display and manipulate the layers. This does result in them being shown relatively small on screen but leaves room to include a preview of how all the layers look together.

Manipulating the layers is easy. Moving is a case of dragging from one position to another and deleting is achieved by simply selecting a layer and tapping the ‘trash’ icon. Adding a new layer and merging two is pretty self explanatory from the icons.

Brushes has a couple of features that Layers currently lacks. First, is the ability to easily adjust the opacity of each layer via a slider. Second, touch and hold on a layer and the now familiar ‘Copy’ option pops up. Move to another painting and (assuming you don’t already have the maximum number of layers), touch and hold again and the Copy & Paste options appear, allowing you to paste layers from one painting to another. Not something I had a use for during my time with the app but a handy feature to have nonetheless.

You can have a maximum of four layers which is one less than you get in ‘Layers’ but, as with that app, I don’t think the limited number is much of a restriction. If the Beatles can record Sgt. Pepper using a four track, you shouldn’t have too much trouble creating your sketch with four layers. This is particularly true with Brushes as it allows you to copy and paste layers between paintings so you could theoretically have any number of them on the go and then merge them down to a final four in the finished picture. In practice I can’t imagine doing this myself but it’s another nice option to have in reserve should you need it.

When you use the fill tool, a version of the colour selection screen appears, allowing you to choose a fill colour that’s different from your current painting colour. This screen puzzled me a bit as it includes an opacity slider. This seems redundant as you’re already able to set and change a layer’s transparency in the layers screen. So, it’s possible to select a fill colour with an opacity of, say, 50%, come back into the layers screen and, even though the layer is set to 100% opacity, it shows as 50% transparent. As far as I can tell, this duplication of opacity sliders doesn’t allow you to do anything more than if you simply had the layer opacity slider, hence my puzzlement.

Starting a new painting creates one with two layers by default. The lowest layer is filled with white and you paint on the next layer up. It’s possible to erase the colour on the bottom layer (i.e. the ‘paper’) which will display the familiar chequer pattern indicating transparency.

When you’re back in the painting screen, the layers icon reflects how many layers exist (with white lines) and which is currently selected (with a longer line). This is a lovely bit of design, giving you all the information needed in an efficient way without hogging screen space.

Which implementation of layers people will prefer between Layers and Brushes is difficult for me to predict. They both have their plus and minus points – the layers are displayed larger in Layers, Brushes shows a preview, Layers animates the transition from the painting screen, Brushes allows you to adjust the opacity of each layer, Layers gives the option to rotate layers and Brushes allows you to copy and paste layers between paintings. They could both slug it out, feature for feature to a standstill.

Overall though, I prefer the larger, animated, 3D style used in Layers but there’s not a lot in it and Brushes succeeds in also offering a different but perfectly usable implementation of layers. The bottom line is you don’t really need to base your buying decision on the layers feature as they both work fine.

Painting
Enough exploration – on with the painting.

As mentioned before, I was initially surprised at the apparent lack of features in Brushes but the proof of the pudding is in the painting (or something like that) so, I jumped right in. At first it seemed pretty standard stuff. Pick a colour, size the brush, zoom into the area I want and start painting.

There was the inevitable process of finding the best way to do stuff given the tools available but once I got over that hump, I started to notice little things. Or, rather, I’d slowly realise that, here and there, something worked a bit better and more naturally than I was used to. It’s actually quite difficult to pin down the various things that just feel right but here’s an example.

Brushes doesn’t come with a blend/smudge tool which I’ve found to be a great aid and speeds up the process of painting. But, while using Brushes, I found I developed my own way to blend between two colours that seemed quicker to me than the one described in the user’s guide as it only required one colour to be picked rather than several. Let me explain.

Imagine you have a splodge of dark blue next to a patch of light blue and want to blend between them. First, use the colour picker to change to the darker shade then make the opacity fairly low (25% or so). Now make a stroke on the lighter patch near (and parallel with) the border of the colours where you want the blend to begin. Move slightly closer to the darker patch and make another parallel stroke so it overlaps the first stroke a little. Then, move slightly closer to the darker patch again and make a third stroke so it overlaps the second and so on until you’re well into the dark patch. If you’ve done it right, the transition should be smoothed out.

There’s nothing clever about this technique at all but in other apps my teeth would be on edge doing this. In Brushes, it’s not nearly as much pain to do as I would have thought as I’d subconsciously been expecting the toolbar to interfere but with the clever coding, it largely stayed out of the way, allowing me to work the way I want to.

In Brushes, a single tap hides the toolbars and another one bring them back. But, while painting, when you slap down several ‘dabs’ or strokes in quick succession (as you might, for example, when blending between two colours), the app (usually) doesn’t get confused and have the toolbar repeatedly popping in and out. I don’t know if this is clever coding, luck or black magic. All I care about is that the app behaves as I’d like it to.

Don’t get me wrong, a dedicated blend/smudge tool would make this technique redundant (and good riddance to it) but given that I have to work this way, it’s made as painless as possible. This is just as well as the developer says that although a blend/smudge tool is a common request, it’s not something he has immediate plans for.

Another little touch that makes quite a difference is the fact that the opacity level doesn’t change when a new colour is picked. In the version of Layers I reviewed, whenever you used the colour picker to select a new colour, the opacity level was reset back to 100%. In Brushes, the opacity doesn’t change until you want it to. I should point out that a recent update of Layers has fixed this behaviour and it no longer resets the opacity automatically.

There’s something about the ‘feel’ of painting with Brushes that adds to the experience. For example, there were times when I’d swear the app recognised the pressure of my stroke! Yes, I know that’s impossible so you can probably imagine my surprise when I’d make a stroke, lifting my finger off at the end and the stroke appeared to get correspondingly weaker at the same point. After scratching my head for some time the only two explanations I could think of were 1) I was imagining it or 2) Brushes took the contact patch of the finger into account and altered the size of the brush accordingly, giving it a pseudo pressure sensitive effect.

I had to check on this with the developer, Steve Sprang. This was his reply: “The OS may have information about the size of the contact area, but that information is not accessible to 3rd party apps. Perhaps you’re just seeing subtle differences in paint opacity at the ends of the stroke?”

Which obviously suggests it was my imagination – shame. However, it does lead to two conclusions. First, the fact that I had this feeling while using Brushes is an indication of the excellent ‘feel’ it imbues – not a very scientific thing to say but that’s the effect it had on me. Secondly, it prompts me to wish Apple allowed access to the contact patch information in the SDK (or, at least, make use of it themselves), giving the iPhone pseudo pressure sensitivity for free! Painting apps could adjust the strength of the stroke according to the pressure applied, piano apps could allow soft and loud notes to be played depending on how ‘hard’ you press the key… Come on Apple, how about it?

Zoomin’ and a Pannin’
A pinch allows you to zoom out to 70% and in to a generous 1600% which really puts your nose right up against the pixels and seems, if anything, a little too much – which is good as it’s unlikely you’ll feel the need to zoom in further.

You’re also able to double tap on an area to immediately zoom between 100% and your last zoom level. If you find yourself accidentally double tapping and zooming when you didn’t mean to, you can turn this off in the Settings app if you prefer. Although I didn’t use this feature much I didn’t find it was triggered accidentally so I was happy to keep the option switched on, just in case. Another nice touch is the ability to pull the picture away from the edge of the screen when you’re zoomed in making it easier to paint up to the edges. When you zoom in or out to anywhere near 100%, Brushes ‘snaps’ to it making that much easier to return to normal view although the double tap feature makes that less of a necessity.

Panning is accomplished with a two finger drag but it’s tweaked to work while you zoom. It’s difficult to describe but they work together very fluidly making it a feel a completely natural action to zoom and pan simultaneously. Another example of something that simply feels ‘right’.

Brush size bottleneck
For all its good points, inevitably, there are some additional features that I felt were required. Apart from the missing blend/smudge tool, I wish there was a way to alter the size of the brush on the fly without having to go back into the brush screen to do it. I found this quickly became the main bottleneck, slowing me down from painting. Not by a huge amount of course but you tend to notice the small stone in your shoe when you’re running.

I always try to propose fixes to problems I find in apps and here I’d suggest using a three finger gesture to resize the brush without needing to activate the brush screen. Moving the fingers apart would increase the size and, obviously, bringing them together reduces it. Alternately, perhaps a two finger gesture turning clockwise to increase brush size and anticlockwise to decrease it would do the job – either way, options are there for a solution to this.

I’d also like a permanent indication on screen of the current size of the brush. It’s easy to forget what size you have selected after being distracted with picking a new colour, messing with layers or whatever. My suggestion (as it was with the Layers app) would be to include a circle in the brush (and eraser) icon – a large circle would represent a big brush and, obviously, a smaller one indicates a small brush with various sizes in between.

I also wish that when I turn my device upside down, the toolbars switch round but the image remains the same way up. I often draw upside down as a good way to get a fresh perspective on a picture. This is particularly handy if you’re drawing from a photo which you can also turn upside down. As it stands, you have to work the controls the wrong way up which makes it tricky to say the least. Working in landscape orientation would also be made much easier by the toolbars adapting to it. Why developers don’t routinely incorporate this feature is beyond me as it’s my understanding that it’s relatively easy to code (easy for me to say, I know).

As with all Painting apps (although I may have neglected to mention it before), I’d also love to have dodge and burn tools, maybe as two extra modes on the brush screen. These would allow users to easily lighten and darken colours meaning less need to fiddle around trying to find a colour’s neighbouring hi-light and shadow tones.

Exporting
When you’ve finished your painting, there are a couple of ways to get your work off the iPhone and onto a computer. Arguably the easiest is to email it to yourself. To do this you have to first save it to the camera roll by selecting the ‘Add to Photos’ option from the viewing mode toolbar (which first gives you the option to rotate your painting). You’d then exit Brushes and run the Photos app where you have a choice of two ways to email it. First you could select and copy your picture, go to the Mail app and paste it into an email. This gives you a 320×480 JPG. The other option is to email directly from Photos which results in a 533×800 JPG. Although you get a higher res output using the second method, it does appear to be a rescaled version of the 320×480 image i.e. there’s no extra detail, just a stretched version of the smaller one.

Your better bet is to use Brushes inbuilt web server to copy the paintings directly to your Computer. This is easily done by tapping the ‘Connect’ icon in the Gallery screen and following the instructions. It’s simply a case of firing up the browser on your computer and typing in the address displayed on the Brushes screen. Assuming they are on the same wireless network, the paintings in Brushes Gallery appear in your browser and you can then right click and save the files in either PNG or ‘brushes’ format. The PNG file comes across as 320×480. Not only does it mean getting your painting out in a lossless format but PNG will also retain any transparency in the picture.

By far the best method to get hold of your work in high resolution is to open the ‘brushes’ file using the free viewer available to download. To quote the description on the website, the viewer “allows you to replay your Brushes paintings stroke for stroke, export them at very high resolutions (up to 1920 x 2880), and even export them as QuickTime movies.” Unfortunately, the viewer is only available for the Mac and, therefore, I’m unable to test it. The good news is the developer tells me a solution is in the works for Windows users and should appear in a few months.

Help
Anyone familiar with other painting apps will have little trouble getting to grips with Brushes. However, like almost all other apps, it does have it’s little foibles and semi-hidden features that many will not be aware of without prompting. The only help available within the app is to be found in the information screen accessed via the Gallery view. Here the help consists of “tap once to toggle tool visibility” and “pinch to zoom when painting”. Not exactly comprehensive.

To his credit, the developer provides a good user’s guide available as a PDF on his web site. I would suggest that although there’s a (non active) link to the website within the information screen, it is a little hidden away (especially to new or inexperienced users) so mentioning the website and user guide on the title or Gallery screens may reach a wider audience.

Natural Media?
Like Layers, Brushes is advertised as a ‘Natural Media’ application. This continues to bug me as it (along with Layers) is certainly not a natural media app as I understand the term from using the real McCoy in the shape of the fantastic Corel Painter. The developer, not surprisingly, disagrees saying “Brushes tries, to a reasonable extent, to make marks that look like something a real brush might make.” which, on the face of it, sounds fair but I personally don’t feel that a superficial resemblance to oil or acrylic brushstrokes is the same thing as realistically simulating the behaviour of paint on different surfaces as Painter does and indicates by using the term ‘Natural Media’.

But if my arguments aren’t enough to sway the developers of Brushes and Layers then perhaps the fact that the term ‘Natural Media’ is a registered trademark (of Corel, I assume) might. As with Layers, I think there’s enough good things about Brushes to boast about without misleading claims. I hope the developer changes this before Corel’s lawyers come a calling.

Just as an aside, I wonder if Corel are considering making a version of ‘Painter’ for the iPhone? Imagine that with the pseudo pressure sensitivity idea. Hhmmm, iPhone Painter… [sound of Homer Simpson drooling as he contemplates doughnuts]

Verdict
Brushes recently reached its first year anniversary on the App Store and I think it’s fair to say it felt like it had been out for a while – both in a good and bad way. On the one hand all the little, under the hood settings had time to be tweaked to perfection while on the other, it had a fairly sparse set of features, giving it the feel of slightly aging software when compared with the recent competition.

The V2.0 update added a very decent and usable implementation of layers which is a great new feature. Only the fact that, for my money, ‘Layers’ does it a little better stops me from raving about it. The other additions (eraser and increased zoom level) are welcome but hardly ground breaking.

But there’s something about Brushes that means the whole is greater than the sum of its rather ordinary seeming parts. It’s just tiny little things here and there that feel right, like how the toolbars keep out of your way when you don’t want them and easily appear when you do and the gap between taps before it’s counted as a double tap and so on. All these things are basically numbers chosen by the developer. So easy to get wrong and so pleasing when they are right.

To make me a complete convert, I’d like the addition of a blend/smudge tool and a way to alter brush size without interrupting my workflow. Not every Artist will want the same features though and a great many will (and do) find Brushes provides all they need already with the addition of layers only serving to please them even more.

To be honest, I think Brushes fame probably has more to do with the length of time it’s been around than its inherent quality. As good as it is, judged objectively against the likes of PhotoForge and Layers, it’s not exceptional. But it’s been around for a year whereas those others are recent additions to the App Store, building on Brushes success and features. So, I’m not surprised it was used to paint the cover of The New Yorker (although I’m not a fan of the picture used) but the fact is, there are at least two or three other painting apps that could have been used to produce a picture of at least equal quality.

But it’s the indefinable ‘feel’ that is Brushes key strength. It’s nothing major or something you could really list as a feature but it seems a little easier and more natural to paint with it.

After reviewing Layers, PhotoForge remained my favoured painting app mainly because of its smudge tool. Has Brushes replaced it? That’s not so straightforward to answer. I feel the need to stick with it for now, if only to see if it reveals any more nice touches and if a blend/smudge tool comes along in the near future, I can see Brushes becoming my favourite. However, with the competition bringing out updates all the time and new apps hitting the Store regularly, Brushes will have its work cut out to continue to hold its own against its rivals.

It arguably remains leader of the pack for now, but only just.

Here’s a video of an earlier version of Brushes in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brushes
Version reviewed: V2.0
Category: Entertainment
Developer: Steve Sprang
Current Price: £2.99
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch

Far from the exclusive domain of accredited Project Managers, PM software can be used for anything from planning the Olympics to remodelling your kitchen or sorting out the family holiday. Good PM software can help organise the tasks, assign appropriate resources, identify bottlenecks and (in theory) predict when various milestones will be completed.

Defining exactly what qualifies as a Project Management tool is quite tricky. My broad, crude definition is software that includes Gantt charts. Try searching for ‘Gantt’ in the app store and you’ll not need to trouble your shoes and socks in order to count them all. Actually, at the time of writing, on the UK app store there’s a grand total of two apps that include a Gantt chart. The latest of these is ‘Projects’ from developer Thomas Blackburn.

PM software can be a little daunting for a novice so it’s important that it’s well explained and easy to use. This is especially true when running on the iPhone with its reputation for ease of use. Projects falls a little short here.

Almost immediately after starting Projects you’re confronted with the choice of ‘Groups’ or ‘Phases’. I’ve done a little Project Management work in the past and am familiar with several PM applications but this had me scratching my head. What difference the choice made wasn’t explained and so my decision had to be essentially random. As it turns out, the choice doesn’t make that much difference and can be changed later should you wish. Even so, it’s off putting to face this baffling choice right from the start especially for a novice. A little explanatory text here would help enormously.

Help?
It’s clear early on that a little help is needed both for the concepts of Project Management in general and the intricacies of Projects in particular. The user is left to his or her own devices when it comes to general PM concepts (get Googling) but the developer has created a helpful ‘Getting Started’ section on his website to give an overview of various elements of the app (although, oddly, the difference between Groups and Phases are not explained anywhere).

I deliberately avoided reading this until after I’d played with the app for a while to see how easy it was to use without external help. This resulted is confusion in a couple of places with some screens and features only being stumbled across by accident. Some would argue this indicates the developer should work on the design in a couple of areas to make things clearer to the user. I’d suggest he work on rather more urgent features first but add the stop gap of a link to his Getting Started web page on the opening screen of the app. Without this, many users simply won’t be aware that an external source of help exists.

As the developer provides a decent overview of the various screens and functions of the app on his website, I won’t duplicate the same information here. Instead I’ll report my experiences in using the app with a simple project.

Anyone for tea?
My standard test for PM software is to create a project listing the steps required to make a cup of tea. The immediate problem this hi-lighted was that Projects deals in units of a day or longer – there’s no option to have tasks of minutes or hours. I think this is a real problem as many tasks (some of them vital) can be only an hour or two long (perhaps less). I understand from the developer that he intends to rectify this in a future update but for now, it remains a problem. How big a problem depends on the nature of your project but this one omission could mean that the app is useless to you. It’s technically possible to work around it by pretending one day equals one hour and proceed on that basis but that’s a huge fudge and not something a user should reasonably expect to have to make in an app of this type.

Adding a task is pretty straightforward but there’s a quirky little control that’s worth mentioning. As well as calendar buttons to mark start and end dates, you can drag the duration bar left to decrease the time and right to increase it. This works but feels a little fiddly and coarse. If you drag it above 1 week, it increases by multiples of weeks and then after 8 weeks it switches to months so a task with a duration of, say 10 days will have to be set manually. I found this control a little odd at first but decided that it was due to it being above the calendar buttons. This made it feel like the primary way to enter duration. By simply moving the bar below the calendar buttons, I think it would make their relative importance clear to the user and help end the awkward input of the start/end dates that I experienced.

Gantt Chart
Projects largely revolves around the Gantt chart. For those unfamiliar with them, they’re a way to present tasks so their duration and order are clear. Being a very visual person, I love anything that portrays complex or detailed information in a simple, visual way and this is exactly what a Gantt chart does. The implementation of the Gantt in Projects is quirky but not unusable.

For example, in order to see future or past months you’ll want to scroll the view horizontally. Your natural inclination is to swipe left and right. In portrait mode, this brings up the option to delete the task you happened to swipe. In fact, to scroll, you have to swipe a narrow band at the very top of the chart.

This is a good example of a feature that I only learned about after reading the developer’s website. It’s also a good example of the odd design evident through the app. Is it really best to use swipe to delete tasks here or would it be better used to scroll the view and delete tasks on the task edit screen? The choice seems obvious to me but perhaps I’m in the minority.

Unsurprisingly, given the format of Gantts, it also works in landscape mode but this is at the expense of functionality. The toolbars and search bar visible in portrait, disappear in this orientation but it’s generally a reasonable trade off. What feels less so is the fact that it’s not possible to zoom in or out of the Gantt. The only options available to you is a choice between displaying 3 weeks, 3 months or 5 months. You’re also able to choose the number of past weeks to display. I’d like the ability to choose the length of time to display from 1 day to a year (or more) and not be limited to pre-sets.

Ideally, I’d like to be able to use a pinch gesture to zoom in and out, showing not only the length of time I want but also more rows of tasks. On that subject, although it’s generally well laid out, I felt the vertical space was a bit wasted. If each row had less height, more tasks would happily fit on screen. The rows seem to be set to the current height to accommodate the notes but they don’t shrink down even if the display of notes is switched off or for tasks that have no notes so, all in all, it’s a bit of a waste of space.

Incidentally, swiping left or right on the main body of the view in landscape mode neither deletes a task or scrolls the view – another odd design decision.

No dependents
For me, the single biggest fault with Projects is that it doesn’t include dependencies. This is where you can say Task B doesn’t start until Task A has finished. So, if you need to amend the start date or duration of Task A, Task B automatically updates to accommodate the changes.

In Projects, tasks can only be set to start one after the other by ensuring the start date of one task coincides with the end date of another but that’s a lot of fiddly work and isn’t the point of software to make things easier? Having to explicitly state every single start and end date of each task is not only a pain when setting up your project but means that any changes or delays have to be manually input. It also discourages experimentation trying to find a more efficient project setup or to shorten the critical path. For me, this tips Projects over the line from useful to, well, not very useful. The good news is that the developer is already working on this and we should see dependencies in the not too distant future.

The omissions don’t end there though. Several other standard Project Management features are missing such as resource management, critical path and import/export of MS Project files. You’re also unable to mark what percentage of a task is complete and you’re limited to changing their status to either ToDo, Waiting, WIP (Work in Progress) or Complete.

Verdict
Anyone expecting a fully featured portable version of MS Project will be disappointed with Projects as it’s lacking some important functionality. This is the developers first app and while it’s a good start, I can’t help but feel this is closer to V0.5 of the software rather than V1.0.

More than any other app I’ve tried, a project management application needs to have a minimum set of particular features to really be of use and currently, Projects is short of a few of them. At least some of those missing features are planned to appear in future versions so the question becomes, is it usable in its current state?

If you’re already familiar with PM software, I think it’s pretty impossible to use Projects without noticing and missing at least one or two favourite features. If, on the other hand, this is your first taste of a Project Management application and plan to use it for only fairly simple projects where tasks are at least one day long and unlikely to change start dates, you may find Projects delivers in a reasonably effective way.

So, a promising start but you may want to wait for version two.

Projects
Version reviewed: V1.0
Category: Productivity
Developer: Thomas Blackburn
Current Price: £3.99
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch

Discounting the dozens of simplistic finger painting applications out there, you’re left with three main contenders for the title of the best painting app: Brushes, PhotoForge and now Layers. I’ve not tried Brushes as yet but have already reviewed and been impressed by PhotoForge. New kid on the block, ‘Layers’ really needs to add something different and impressive to the mix in order to have a chance of standing out.

The ‘Unique Selling Point’ of Layers is, unsurprisingly given its name, the inclusion of layers (I’ll stick to the convention of referring to the app with a capital ‘L’ as opposed to the feature that’s all lower case). I’ll take a look at this in detail later but start with the more conventional elements of the app.

The first time you run Layers, you’re given a few pointers as to how to get started and where to find the tools, which is a nice touch and the first indication of the thought that’s been put into the design of this app. The first thing you need to do is press the ‘+’ button to create a canvas to paint on. This takes you to the main screen where you’ll spend most of your time. This has the painting area in the middle with toolbars appearing along the top and bottom of the screen. On top is a button leading to the Gallery view (where all your work can be seen, loaded and erased though not re-ordered which would be a nice addition), the name of the layer you’re working on and, to the top right is the export button.

Along the bottom of the screen are the paint tools. Here you’ll find a button to the layers view, undo, redo, colour picker, brush screen and colour selection. I think there’s a button missing here as I’d like to be able to quickly select the eraser tool. At the moment, this is combined into the colour screen but having one click access to it while you’re painting would be useful. This would require a slight design change and my suggestion would be for one tap to enable/disable the eraser and brush tools with a double tap moving you into their settings screen.

Colour selection
On opening the colour screen, you’re presented with a colour wheel covering all the hues of the rainbow. To its right is a saturation slider (colourful at the top and monochrome at the bottom). Above the wheel can be found four boxes. The two on the ends allow quick access to black and white while the two in the middle are labelled ‘old’ and ‘new’. The old/current colour appears in the left box and the colour you’re selecting to its right. I was puzzled by these boxes for a while, wondering why they were divided diagonally in two. Luckily for me, the developer, Ben Gotow, was kind enough to offer to answer some questions I had while working on this review so you’ll find a few of his responses to my queries scattered through this piece. On this occasion, he explained that the diagonal cut allowed the app to show the colour against a light and dark background.

That effect depends on how transparent the colour is. Completely opaque and you just see the full-on colour. Any degree of transparency, though, and the background starts to affect the result. All in all, a useful touch. The transparency of the colour is controlled with the slider at the bottom of the screen. Fully opaque on the right and transparent as glass on the left.

One small annoyance is the fact that when you pick a new colour using the colour picker, the transparency level is reset. The natural assumption is that if you’ve set, say, 50% transparency and then change colour, that it will remain at 50%. In fact, the opacity is reset to 100% opaque. Not the end of the world but it would be better if the app didn’t act in this counter intuitive way.

Eraser
To the right of the transparency slider is an icon for the eraser tool. Pressing it turns off most of the screen’s colour related controls and converts the transparency slider into the control for the strength of each eraser stroke. In an app that is otherwise so well designed, this really stands out as a cumbersome and unnecessary attempt to simplify the controls by shoehorning them into the minimum space. This does lead to a couple of less than ideal results. For example, the eraser bar goes from fully opaque to fully transparent which translates to 100% erase to 0%. Why would you want an eraser that erases nothing? Also, every time I used it, I found myself having to guess which end of the bar was which as it’s not obvious. Giving the eraser its own settings screen (accessed with that new Eraser icon on the main toolbar I mentioned) would be better in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a deal breaker by any means but just feels to me that combining it into the colour selection screen is one piece of simplification too far. Not only does it add a little complication (and possible confusion) to the colour selection screen but it makes the eraser tool an extra click away.

The Brush screen
The Brush screen presents a much simpler set of controls to the user and can be accessed either by pressing the tab visible at the top of the Colour screen or via its own icon on the toolbar. Here you can choose between eight different brushes and adjust its size via a slider. Tapping on the icons to the left and right of the slider adjusts the size by small, precise amounts – not something I found of particular use but another nice feature.

One thing of note here is that the brushes are labelled ‘Default Brushes’ which suggested to me that they might be adjustable. It turns out they are not but the developer informs me that the potential is there (in a future update if it proves popular) for users to load in new sets of brushes. Personally, this wouldn’t be a high priority for me – there are one or two other features I’d like to see before I’d want additional brushes.

Colour Picker
The final painting tool on the toolbar is the colour picker. There are two ways of activating this. Pressing the icon brings up the selection ring which you drag over the painting until it reaches the colour you want. This also allows you to choose between acting on the current layer or all of them. The other way is simply to tap and hold your finger on the painting for a few moments and up it pops. This works very well except for one small but annoying detail. It takes just a bit too long before the ring appears. This sounds trivial but soon gets quite aggravating.

Enough of the tools, what is it like to paint with?

The first thing to note is that I found it odd painting a square picture which the only choice of ‘canvas’ you get. In no other circumstance can I recall doing that. Every other drawing or painting I’ve worked on has been done using the more conventional proportions which gives you the choice of working ‘portrait’ or ‘landscape’. Square just feels wrong (if for no other reason than it doesn’t make best use of the screen space on the iPhone) and I’m at a loss to understand why it was chosen. The developer tells me that the option for the more conventional shape is likely to appear in a future update. The resolution of the painting is also a bit low although not so much that it feels inhibiting. Detail can still be added and the resulting image will (with a bit of skill) be something you’d be happy sharing with others.

When I looked at PhotoForge, one of the minor annoyances was having to manually switch the pan and zoom tools on/off. Layers improves on that greatly by allowing the user to access these features via gestures. A pinch zooms in (up to 1000%) and out with a double tap quickly zooming in (to 200%) or out (to view the whole picture). I did find that when I attempted to dab a few brush marks on, it would occasionally be read as a double tap and the picture would zoom when I didn’t want it to. It wasn’t long though before I got used to simply slowing my dabs down to stop this happening – a price I was happy to pay for easy zooming. Finally, a two finger drag pans the canvas around. These controls work very well although at first I did find that the occasional pan gesture would confuse Layers and lead to an unwanted brush stroke. I found that spreading my fingers out a little (as opposed to keeping them together) fixed this problem.

During my painting, I did find that I wanted some indication on screen of the size of the brush. There’d often be times when I’d be doing something between strokes (changing colour, zooming, changing layers or whatever) and forget the size of brush I had. I’d then either need to try it and possibly undo if it wasn’t what I wanted or go into the Brush screen to check. An indication on-screen, perhaps with a circle around the brush icon whose size suggests the brush width, would be helpful. I also found that I’d generally alternate brush sizes between a thin, detail brush and a larger, more general size. Perhaps there could be some way to easily switch between the two in future but I have to admit I don’t immediately have a good suggestion for how to implement that.

When you paint, the toolbars slide off screen to maximise the viewable area and return when you pause from painting. But, just like the time taken for the colour picker to appear, it’s takes a little too long for the toolbars to reappear. Again, this sounds trivial but quickly becomes frustrating. There is already a way to force the toolbar to return and that’s with a shake. I’ve never been a fan of the shake on the iPhone. It seems too physical and different from the usual gestures and I find it really brings me out of whatever I’m doing. It should be said that it doesn’t require a full shake in Layers but merely a twitch of the wrist. Even so, a tweak of the time required for the toolbar to come back would be preferable to the RSI inducing shake control. I’m happy to say that the developer has taken note of my (and others) comments on this and plans to take a look at it.

I also found that when I tried to draw a slightly curved line, it would be drawn straight more often than not. I’d imagine this is a limitation of the screen resolution (i.e. the hardware) rather than Layers.

In case it seems I’m being overly critical, I should explain that most of my suggestions for changes are just small improvements to enhance already adequate features but one tool that is just plain missing (and Layers is crying out for) is some kind of smudge or mix tool. A good percentage of the strokes I made during my painting in Layers was an attempt to smooth out the transition between two areas of colour. A smudge tool would not only make this much easier but vastly cut down on the time needed to paint. I’m convinced the painting I created using Layers would have taken something like 75% of the time using PhotoForge (which already incorporates a smudge tool).

Natural Media?
On its web page and in the App Store, Layers is described as a ‘natural media’ painting application. I really hope the developer changes this as, despite its many fine points, Layers cannot be described as a natural media app. It doesn’t replicate the behaviour of real world media such as oils, watercolour, pastels etc so the description is a little misleading to say the least. Ben, the developer tells me he used this language as it’s used by his main competition, ‘Brushes’. While I understand the reasoning, I can’t help but think that two wrongs don’t make a right and hope the description is changed for Layers (and Brushes) to make it less misleading – after all, there’s plenty to boast about with Layers without making dubious claims.

Exporting
When you’ve finished your picture you’ll probably want to get it off the iPhone and into the real world. Pressing the export button located at the top right of the painting screen (seems odd that it’s not in the Gallery view), brings up several options. Emailing a Photoshop ‘PSD’ file (which keeps the layers intact) or a flattened JPG directly from the app results in a picture with a resolution of 512×512 but saving it to your Photo collection and then emailing from there gives you a 800×800 file for some reason. The best way to transfer it seems to be via the ‘Sync’ option (which is located in the Gallery screen). This requires you to have installed the ‘Layers Replay Viewer’ application, available free. As it says on the website, with this you can “replay your work, export paintings as high-resolution JPG and Adobe Photoshop files (up to 4096px x 4096px), and create QuickTime movies for sharing online!” I’m unable to try this as it’s currently only available for Macs. Happily, the developer is planning to create a web based method giving Windows users a way to output high resolution images.

Finally… layers
The headline feature with Layers is, as mentioned before, the inclusion of layers. While I wished for them when reviewing PhotoForge, I thought I was probably being a little too ambitious given the limitations of the platform and interface. Also, I had a feeling my desire for layers may have been at least partially down to the similarity of some of PhotoForge’s features to Photoshop which would naturally lead me to think of layers as it’s such an integral part of Adobe’s famous desktop application.

For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of layers, they can be thought of as a pile of transparent sheets you can paint on. When viewed from above the different elements appear to be painted on one combined sheet. These sheets can be reordered, deleted, created and selectively glued together (or ‘merged’). The obvious use for layers in a painting app is to paint different elements onto separate sheets, the background on one, the mid ground on another and the main subject on a third, for example. Also, you might sketch out your initial idea on one layer and paint onto another. This flexibility encourages experimentation on a grander scale than the undo function does alone. Whole areas can be easily changed or discarded without disturbing other parts that you’re happy with. For example, while painting a portrait, you might be unhappy with how you’ve done an eye and try painting it again using a new layer. This gives the option to accept the new version and merge it down into the main painting or delete it with no damage done.

Well, that’s the theory but how has the idea been translated for use on the iPhone? The short answer is amazingly well.

When a new painting is started, you are given two layers. The bottom one is already filled with white and by default, you draw on the next layer up. You can, if you choose, change the ‘paper’ colour or even erase the colour entirely although it’s a little difficult to see that. If the traditional Photoshop chequer pattern appeared ‘under’ the bottom layer it might make things a little clearer. This is a possibility for a future version of the app.

You are limited to a maximum of five layers but in practice, with a little forethought, I found it barely counts as a restriction. Given how easily layers can be reordered and merged, it encourages you to work on an area until you’re happy then merge those layers together before adding new ones to work on the next part.

Moving from the painting screen to the layers view isn’t just a straight switch between one and the other. You get a smoothly animated transition where the two dimensional canvas separates out into a three dimensional view showing all the layers in order. Even though it looks very snazzy, this animated transition is no gimmick. It serves to explain the concept of layers and their relation to each other, even to a novice, in just the few moments it takes for the animation to play out.

The currently selected layer appears with a blue glow around it and choosing another is a simple case of tapping on it. If I’m being picky (and I certainly am) it could be made a little more obvious which layer is selected but I can’t honestly say I found it too difficult making out which layer was ‘it’.

Rearranging layers is simple. Before even thinking about it, I found I’d intuitively drag a layer from one position to another and it would smoothly move, the other layers automatically shuffling around to accommodate it.

This makes merging layers a doddle too. Simply select one, press the ‘More’ button and choose ‘Merge Down’ and your layer is combined with the one below. Also to be found in the ‘More’ menu is the option to duplicate the layer and fill with the current colour. This works as expected but it’s worth mentioning a neat trick that may not be obvious. If your current ‘Colour’ happens to be the eraser and it’s set to, say, 50% opacity, then filling the selected layer with it will result in the layer becoming semi transparent. Duplicating the layer and merging the two would restore full opacity if needed. Not something you’ll need to do that often but worth knowing. The developer also mentioned he was thinking of adding the option of easily adjusting the layers opacity but this manual method works in the mean time.

Deleting a layer is a simple case of selecting it and pressing the ‘-’ button. Likewise, new ones are created by pressing ‘+’. Here’s my only real criticism of how layers are implemented: I found I assumed that when I added a layer, it would automatically be selected but no. Whatever layer was selected before remains so. This led to a number of occasions when I would finish painting on a layer, go to the layers screen, add a new one, move back to the painting view and start painting, not on the new one as intended but still on the old one. I’m happy to say the developer is considering changing this but for the time being I’m trying to get into the habit of returning to the paint screen by double tapping the layer I want to paint on. This selects the layer and returns to the Painting screen in one move – another nice touch.

I did stumble upon an obscure bug that led to some layers not being saved but you shouldn’t let that put you off as the steps needed to reproduce it are pretty obscure and most users will not encounter it. I also informed the developer who’ll fix it.

To round off, moving, adding, deleting and filling of layers are fully undo and redo-able. All in all, the way layers are implemented is a joy to behold and a lesson to other developers in how to make a potentially complex and confusing feature almost transparently intuitive.

New features
The developer also mentioned a new feature that he’s hoping to add in the future. It’s an interesting sounding community feature where users could upload, share and comment on each others work. Unfortunately it’s looking unlikely as Apple currently slap a ‘Mature 17+’ rating on apps with this type of ‘user generated content’ feature, presumably in case someone uploaded a picture of a nudey lady.

Let’s just hope Apple employ someone with a bit of common sense and revoke this ridiculous restriction. While you’re at it, take a moment to breath a sigh of relief that Apple aren’t in charge of our galleries and museums – presumably, they’d lock half of the old masters away in case someone feinted at the sight of a nipple. Let’s also hope it was the same joker who deemed a copy/paste function to be a frivolous luxury that no one uses in the real world. The thought of two people with such breathtaking stupidity working in a position of power at Apple doesn’t bear thinking about.

Verdict
In a sense, Layers is a one trick pony. If it wasn’t for the implementation of the layers feature, it would be a decent but fairly uninspired painting app. Although full of nice little touches and only a couple of minor annoyances, for me, it’s one major fault is the lack of a smudge tool. This is enough, though, to ensure PhotoForge currently remains my first choice for painting on the iPhone.

But I’m conscious that this is V1.0 and I can forgive its minor foibles and even a missing smudge tool. Why? Because of those layers… The layers feature is implemented quite brilliantly. It’s done so well that it’s almost impossible to imagine it being done any other way – the sign of great design and good reason to be very optimistic about future versions.

Are layers absolutely necessary for a Painting app? Clearly not as PhotoForge (and even Layers itself) can be used quite happily without them. But there’s no doubt that it’s a killer feature and will, I’m sure, be reason enough for many iPhone Artists to migrate. It’s a shame that there’s no Lite/free version of Layers (although the developer is considering it) as once you’ve tried using layers, it’s a tool many will be very reluctant to live without.

I have little doubt that, in time, Layers will mature into possibly the best Painting app available on the iPhone. It’s not there yet and, no doubt, the competition will already be working hard to keep up so even if you’re an iPhone Artist who doesn’t feel a need for the layers feature, you should be grateful to Layers for raising the bar.

Layers
Version reviewed: V1.0
Category: Entertainment
Developer: Benjamin Gotow
Current Price: £2.99
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch