The race to add as many new AI features to software as possible continues, with Adobe the latest to preview a number of them that are designed to make creating and editing video and audio easier than ever.

Adobe previewed new generative AI capabilities that are coming to its Premiere Pro video editing app including the ability to prompt the app with what you want and then have the AI work its magic using a new video model for Firefly.

However, Adobe is keeping its launch plans quiet — the preview only confirms that the features are on the way and stops short of saying when creatives can expect to be able to take them for a spin.

Generative AI for all

Announcing the plans in a press release, Adobe said that the new tools will include "breakthrough generative AI innovations within Adobe Premiere Pro that will reimagine video creation and production workflows, delivering new creative possibilities that every pro editor needs to keep up with the high-speed pace of video production."

The release continued, adding that "new generative AI tools coming to Premiere Pro this year enable users to streamline editing all videos, including adding or removing objects in a scene or extending an existing clip." Beyond that, new workflows "will be powered by a new video model that will join the family of Firefly models including Image, Vector, Design and Text Effects."

Adobe also says that it intends to bring third-party generative AI models into the Adobe ecosystem. Those models include those from OpenAI and Runway, and the company is already testing integrating them with Premiere Pro.

The features that users can expect include Generative Extend, seamlessly adding frames to make clips longer, as well as Object Addition and Removal which will do exactly what it sounds like. Finally, Text to Video will allow people to generate new footage without ever leaving their desk.

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You may have been using the Adobe Firefly generative AI tool to create commercially safe and ethical images for use in your work and other projects of late. After all, that's how Adobe sold the image-creating tool to users, saying that it was a better option than competing products like Midjourney. But it turns out that the two are more similar than you might think — because Firefly used Midjourney-created images as a way to learn.

While Adobe said that it used its own Adobe Stock images to teach Firefly's AI how to create new ones, things were a little murkier than the company first let on. While that was technically true, and Adobe Stock's database of hundreds of millions of licensed images was indeed used, the source of those images is a problem. Because some of them were created using Midjourney, the same generative AI that Adobe claimed wasn't to be trusted.

Adobe says that only around 5% of the images it used to train Firefly were generated by other AI platforms and tools, but the figure is absolutely not zero, and it flies in the face of a marketing strategy that has now come back to haunt the company.

Busted

The issue stems from the way Firefly was created. Like all other generative AI tools, Firefly needed a huge amount of data for its training. Midjourney and similar alternatives have historically used data scraped from the internet, regardless of where that might come from or who actually owned it. That's caused plenty of concern among rights holders and that's what Adobe jumped on when publicizing Firefly.

Bloomberg reports that Adobe had made quite a big deal about how it trained Firefly. AI-generated imagery in Adobe Stock “enhances our dataset training model, and we decided to include this content for the commercially released version of Firefly,” an Adobe employee reportedly wrote when explaining how Firefly works.

Now, we know some less ethical sources were used when training Firefly.

“Generative AI images from the Adobe Stock collection are a small part of the Firefly training dataset,” Adobe representative Michelle Haarhoff said in a Discord post in September 2023.

The company now says that around 5% of its training dataset came from other AI platforms. “Every image submitted to Adobe Stock, including a very small subset of images generated with AI, goes through a rigorous moderation process to ensure it does not include IP, trademarks, recognizable characters or logos, or reference artists’ names,” a company spokesperson reportedly told Bloomberg.

Ultimately, Adobe hasn't necessarily done a great deal wrong here, but it's a bad look for a company that had tried to market its generative AI as being better than the competition because of the ethics involved in how it learned to do the sole thing it was created to do. The fact that images created using another company's AI were used at all is less than ideal, no matter how small the number might have been.

It isn't thought that this snafu could leave Adobe in any legal hot waters, but it's a self-inflicted black eye that probably never needed to happen and it remains to be seen how Firefly users around the world will respond to the news.

Apple is expected to launch its own generative AI tools in the future, with June's WWDC event likely to see a big AI push for iOS 18, macOS 15, and beyond.

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Adobe Max is software company Adobe's annual creativity conference. It's a three-day event held in Los Angeles that's filled with performances and talks. But it's also when the company makes some of its biggest and most exciting announcements.

Adobe Max 2023 was no exception. This year, Adobe has lifted the lid on a whole range of new tools and features that are coming to its existing products. 

As anyone with an interest in design might expect, many of the latest announcements from Adobe focus on AI, particularly how Adobe's generative AI, called Adobe Firefly, will work with the company's Creative Cloud apps, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere Pro.

With so many new announcements made at Adobe Max 2023, which are the most important Adobe updates? And what will these new Adobe tools mean for the way we use design favorites, like Photoshop and Lightroom? 

What is Adobe Firefly?

The majority of the announcements that were made at Adobe Max 2023 this year were about the new AI features coming to Adobe's Creative Cloud apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere Pro.

To understand these new features, we need to understand Adobe Firefly. First announced in 2022 and released in public beta March 2023, Firefly is Adobe's generative AI tool.

Firefly exists as a standalone web app – you can access this at firefly.adobe.com – where you can create images from text prompts, create text effects, and use a brush to remove objects or paint in new ones, as well as much more. But Firefly also powers and supplements features in other Adobe apps. 

Think removing things from photos and adding a realistic background in their place, changing the overall mood of a video or adding new textures to objects. Firefly makes all of these tasks possible across Adobe's whole suite of products.

How does Firefly do what it does? That's complex. But a big part of how the generative AI model works is it's been fed all sorts of images to "train" it. And Firefly has been trained with images from free-to-use sites, like Creative Commons, Wikimedia and Flickr Commons.

It's also been trained on millions of images and videos in Adobe Stock, which includes royalty-free stock images, photos, graphics, vectors, video footage, illustrations, templates and much more.

Adobe Max: 5 of the best Firefly announcements

At Adobe Max 2023, most of the new announcements were about how more of Firefly's AI tools are now coming to the Adobe apps we know and love. Let's take a look at some of the most interesting – and, potentially, most useful.

1. Better AI generated images

One of the biggest announcements at Adobe Max 2023 was Firefly Image 2 Model. This is a new version of the Firefly AI image generator. 

That might not sound all that exciting. But it is, because with this new version, all of the images it creates are higher-quality. Think more accurate human skin and eyes, as well as improved colors. 

This is thanks to a better understanding of text prompts, as well as better recognition of objects and landmarks. It also has a new Prompt Guidance feature, which essentially teaches users how to get better results from the prompts they use.

2. More creative control

As well as creating better images, there are new, more nuanced ways to control what those images look like. 

One that caught our eye is called Generative Match. This allows users to create new content in new custom styles. This is done by either picking images from a list – along the lines of "I want one a bit like that" – or uploading other images that'll guide the new style when images are created from text prompts. 

The thinking here is that if you need to create something in a particular style, you'll be able to do it easily. Think brands working in specific guidelines who could create a lot of content at once that ticks all the boxes. 

3. Great-looking design templates

In Adobe Express, a free service in Adobe's Creative Cloud, there's now a new Firefly Design Model tool. What this does is allow you to make new templates based on text prompts. 

It does this by using Adobe Stock images, as well as Adobe Fonts. The result is a load of templates, which are tailored to particular sizes. Like creating templates for a social media manager that are all the perfect fit for Instagram Stories. 

4. Enhanced video editing in Premiere Pro 

There are a bunch of new AI tools coming to Premiere Pro, Adobe's video editing software. 

In a demonstration, Adobe showed that users can now auto-transcribe video into text. What this then does is it allows people to find parts of a video they need based on searching for specific words. 

There's also a Filler Word Detection tool, which does what you'd expect, finding the "ums" in your videos and then allowing you to get rid of them. 

These two new AI-powered features might sound small, but anyone who's spent hours and hours editing video will know they're going to make a huge difference. 

5. Enhanced photo editing in Lightroom

Lightroom, Adobe's photo editing app, has got several new tools powered by AI and Firefly. There's now a Lens Blur tool, which allows you to create a simulated depth of field in a photo that doesn't have one. Users will be able to change this with a slider and choose from different blurring effects.

A feature called Point Color is about making more precise edits to a photo. You'll be able to use the selector tool like you already can, but you'll be able to adjust colors and change hue, saturation and luminance, too.

Now that the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro are here people are looking for new ways to make use of their extra features. But rather than it being Apple's best iPhones pushing the envelope, in some cases at least, it's the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

That's following the news that Photomator is going to gain a new HDR photo editing feature and it's all thanks to the arrival of the iPhone 15 family of devices.

Pixelmator says that the updated Photomator is on the way and that once it arrives people will be able to edit photos in HDR for the very first time. So long as they have a display capable of showing it, that is.

All the nits

Writing in its announcement blog post, Pixelmator says that it's the iPhone 15 that makes this possible.

"The latest iPhone 15 stands out as the first non-pro device offering a professional-grade display with 1600 nits of peak brightness, perfect for viewing and capturing HDR photos," the blog post explains. "To make the most of this powerful display technology, Photomator will soon offer full HDR support – from import to editing and export."

Unfortunately, the updated Photomator isn't yet ready — but it's on the way. "We’re already in the final stages of HDR development, and we’re excited to share a sneak peek at HDR support with you," Pixelmator says.

The iPhone 15 isn't the only device that will support HDR photo editing of course. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro lineups are good to go, as are iPads and Macs with XDR displays. The Pro DisplayX DR is also supported.

As for those without fancy high-brightness displays, they'll get limited HDR support. "MacBook Air, iMac, iMac Pro, Studio Display, and MacBook Pro models not equipped with XDR displays provide limited HDR support with peak brightness ranging between 300 and 600 nits," Pixelmator explains.

Pixelmator also confirmed that people will need to update to iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma to get the new HDR support, too.

It's been a long time coming and some of us had started to wonder if it would ever happen, but Apple says that Final Cut Pro is coming to the iPad. And it's coming soon, too.

The pro-level video editing app has long been a big player in the Mac world of video editing and creation but until recently there was little sign that the app would make the transition to Apple's tablet. That's now happening, but just how capable will the app be and when will you be able to try it out for yourself?

And just as importantly, how much will it all cost?

Final Cut Pro for iPad: Release Date

On Tuesday, May 23, 2023, Final Cut Pro for iPad will be released and will become available for download from the App Store.

It is important to note that the app is not available for pre-order and must be downloaded separately, even if you already have the Mac version installed already. It is not a universal binary, but there is a possibility that this may change in the future so never say never.

Final Cut Pro for iPad: Price

Final Cut Pro for iPad can be downloaded for free from the App Store, but there will still be costs associated with using it. However, these costs will not be required initially.

Apple confirmed that Final Cut Pro for iPad app will be offered with a free one-month trial the first time that it is installed, which is good news for people who just want to see what all the fuss is about before switching from their existing video editing app. After that month though, users will pay $4.99 per month or $49 per year to continue using the app.

The subscription model for Final Cut Pro has caused some controversy among potential users, but it does offer certain advantages — although that might depend on how long you use it for. The lower cost of entry means that more people can access the app, but long-term subscribers may end up paying more than the one-time cost of $299 for the Mac version of Final Cut Pro. It is possible that Apple may adopt a similar subscription model for the app in the future or combine the iPad and Mac apps under a single one. Time will tell.

Compatibility: Which iPads does Final Cut Pro work with?

Unfortunately, you're going to need a modern iPad to be able to use Final Cut Pro on it. The app is understandably one that requires a beefy chip, although it's disappointing that Apple couldn't make at least some A-series iPads work.

The result is that you need an M1 or M2 iPad to be able to install Final Cut Pro. That means that the compatible iPads include:

• 11 and 12.9-inch 2021 M1 iPad Pro or later
• 2022 iPad Air or later

You might not need the very best iPad that Apple sells, but there could be a lot of people left with an upgrade decision to make.

Final Cut Pro: Controls and inputs

Final Cut Pro adds new methods for interacting with the app thanks to the iPad's touchscreen and Apple Pencil support.

A new jog wheel makes editing easier and offers up new ways for creatives to interact with their content. A new Magnetic Timeline makes frame-accurate edits easier and faster, while Apple Pencil Hover support allows for easy skimming of the preview timeline without ever touching the screen.

Keyboard support is also included, as you'd expect, giving pros a faster way to make great content.

Final Cut Pro for iPad: Camera mode and multi-cam editing

This is where things start to get a little bit complicated. Apple says that Final Cut Pro allows people to record video using the iPad's onboard cameras in either orientation, monitor audio, and more while also controlling things like focus and exposure.

However, anyone who wants to record in ProRes will need to be running an M2 iPad Pro, unfortunately.

Back on to the good news. "With multicam video editing, clips can automatically be synchronized and edited together, and users can even switch angles in a multicam clip with just the touch of a finger," Apple said when announcing the new app.

Final Cut Pro for iPad: Cutting with machine learning

Final Cut Pro for iPad will leverage Apple's machine learning chops for things like Scene Removal Mask. The feature gives creators the ability to remove and replace the background behind a subject without having to use a green screen, meaning it can be done after filming and without the planning needed to set up that screen.

Final Cut Pro for iPad: Graphics, effects, and audio

Final Cut Pro is about more than just cutting together video. Apple says that creators will be able to use a "vast library of professional graphics, effects, and audio to enhance their storytelling."

That apparently includes a bunch of HDR backgrounds as well as professional soundtracks that will automatically adjust themselves to match the length of the video being created.

Final Cut Pro for iPad: Importing and exporting content

Getting media into Final Cut Pro will be as simple as selecting and importing it from the Files or Photos apps, while projects can also be imported from iMovie on the iPhone.

Projects created on the iPad can also be exported to the Mac, Apple's announcement confirms.

Creating on the iPad — now better than ever

The iPad continues to become more of a creation device than it was in previous years. After launching as a media consumption machine back in 2010, the iPad is now more capable and more powerful than ever before. The arrival of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro just goes to prove that point.

Sure, the subscription situation might not be to everyone's liking. But if you'd previously balked at the $299 asking price for Logic Pro on the Mac, this might be your chance to see what the app can do — so long as you have an iPad capable of running it, that is.

The subscription payments will hopefully ensure that Apple continues to update Final Cut Pro for iPad regularly, bringing new features and capabilities more regularly. If that happens this could be the best version of Final Cut Pro available.

If Apple really wants people to consider the iPad, and specifically the iPad Pro, to be real Mac replacements it needs to produce the apps to make that possible. Now, it could be working on not just one but two of the apps that creators would probably jump at having an iPad version of.

The main one of those apps is the Final Cut Pro video editor which is used by countless creatives from those working on movies to YouTubers and beyond. The second? Another app that is the go-to for so many people — the audio creation tool Logic Pro.

If both of these really are coming to the iPad that's great news, but even better is the claim that in the case of Final Cut Pro at least, it'll be just like its Mac counterpart.

Finally Final Cut Pro

This is all according to the Twitter leaker @analyst941 who has been prolific of late. This is the person that correctly predicted the arrival of the iPhone 14 Pro and the Dynamic Island. But beyond a tip about Apple's best iPhone, we don't know all that much about them. That hasn't stopped them from sharing all kinds of details of late, with this tweet being the latest.

According to that tweet, Final Cut Pro is coming to the iPad in 2024, while Logic Pro users will have to wait a little longer — it's 2025 for you, apparently.

The leaker goes on, saying that "to clarify, this version of Final Cut Pro will be 1:1 to its big brother, along with a slightly modified UI to support touch."

That all sounds very promising indeed, but it's important to remember that we don't yet know whether this person has the connections required to make this kind of claim. We'll know more about that when WWDC23 rolls around. If their other claims come in, it might be time to start paying real attention to this latest report.

These days, it's hard to do anything without hearing about AI art generators. Upon simply giving these complex programs a prompt, they can turn around and generate detailed imagery that matches. Midjourney is one of the most popular options because it offers a free trial, works relatively fast, and can generate art in a wide range of art styles. 

It can be a little confusing to get started with Midjourney since it's integrated into the chat app Discord. Not sure what to do? Here are step-by-step instructions for setting up Midjourney and using it within Discord. 

Note: There is a lot of controversy around AI art generators like Midjourney because they were trained using real artists' work, but without the original artists' permission. Some artists are even suing Midjourney based on copyright violations. Please consider the ethical implications of using AI art generators when using the art that is generated from them. 

How to set up Midjourney's free trial on Discord

Midjourney is an AI image-generating program that works within Discord. So, in order to use it you must first login to Discord or download Discord and set up a Discord account. 

Here's what to do after you've gotten your Discord account squared away on iPhone or Macbook:

1. Navigate to Midjourney.com and select Join the Beta on the bottom right side of the screen.

2. This screen will pop up. Select Continue to Discord. You'll need to login to Discord if you currently aren't.

3. Select Join Midjourney.

4. Complete the CAPTCHA test to verify that you are human.

5. A Discord server guide will pop up, and you can either click through it and learn as much as you want or select Dismiss to make it go away.
   • If you're already part of the Midjourney Discord then you'll need to click on the Midjourney icon on the left to open the server. It's a sailboat on a white background.

6. As part of the free Beta trial, you can make up to 25 free images with prompts. If you want to keep using Midjourney after that, you'll have to pay for it. Select one of the Rooms under Newcomer Rooms to get started with your free trial. In these rooms, you'll be able to give Midjourney prompts along with other Midjourney trial users.

7. Type "/imagine" into the command box at the bottom of the screen. Then click on the box that pops up above the command box area to make a prompt box appear.

8. Type in any descriptive prompt in the prompt box. Make sure to stay in line with Midjourneys rules, which can be viewed at #rules within the Discord server. The more details you provide in your prompt, the more likely Midjourney is to produce something in the direction and style you want it to. Note that Midjourney's generated images default to a 1:1 square ratio unless you indicate otherwise.
   • Prompt example 1: Cat fishing in a fish bowl, depth of field, 8k, hyper-realistic, 16:9
   • Prompt example 2: Watercolor illustration of a fruit bat enjoying a peach at night with the moon in the background whimsical art style

9. The first time you use Midjourney to generate art via prompt, a box will pop up telling you that you must accept Midjourney's Terms of Service before you can get to art generating. Read through this and then select Accept ToS if you agree to the terms.

10. Let Midjourney work for a bit and then four images based on your prompt will appear. Scroll down to the most recent posts in the newbie channel to see them. You'll also notice several boxes underneath the images. Each number corresponds to one of the images above. Here's what these buttons mean:
    • U1 - U4 (Upscale): Clicking on one of these upscales the image designated with the same number and posts it in the channel.
    • V1 - V4 (Variation): Clicking on one of these will create four different versions of the image selected and posts the images in the newbie channel.
    • Refresh button: This generates four new images based on the original prompt.

11. When Midjourney generates an image you like, select the corresponding upscale button (U#) and it will generate a higher-resolution version of that image in the chat. Scroll down to the most recent post to see it. Note that some details might be different from the previous generation. More buttons appear under the image, this is what they do:
    • Make Variations: Generates additional variations that are slightly different from the image above. 
    • Light Upscale Redo: Generates a 1024 x 1024p version of the image, which features more details. 
    • Beta Upscale Redo: Generates a 1024 x 1024p version of the image, but without adding many other details. 
    • Remaster: Improves an older image that was generated in an older Midjourney version by using newer algorithms.  
    • Web: Takes you to the Midjourney website.
    • Bookmark: Literally bookmarks the post with the AI-generated artwork for you to make it easy to find later.

How to get a Midjourney subscription

Midjourney offers three subscription plans: A Basic plan that is $10 per month (or $8 per month if you purchase a full year), a Standard Plan that is $30 per month (or $24 per month if you purchase a full year), and the Pro Plan which is $60 per month ($48 per month if you purchase a full year). In each case, you'll be able to have "three concurrent Jobs" going at once and "10 Jobs waiting in queue." However, the higher the plan you choose, the faster GPU time you get for art generation. 

Here's how to subscribe to one of these plans. 

1. Go to https://www.midjourney.com/account/.
2. Click on a newbie channel.
3. Type "/subscribe" into the chat and then select the box the shows up that reads "Open Subscription page."
4. Click on the link that appears. 
5. A window will pop up detailing the subscription plan details. Select the plan you want and choose whether to pay Yearly or Monthly.
6. Select Subscribe.
7. Enter your payment information. 
8. Select Subscribe to complete the process.

Generating art for any prompt

If you've never used Discord before then getting started with Midjourney can be a little confusing. However, once you know what to do, you can start issuing AI art prompts and allow Midjourney to handle art generation based on your words. 

The varied art styles and uses of color are some of the reasons why Midjourney is considered one of the best AI art generators out there. You can literally give Midjourney any prompt and it will make something out of it that looks like it was created in one of the best drawing apps. Just remember that it is due to the program being fed actual artists' work that it is able to generate the art that it does. Laws surrounding AI art generation might change going forward. 

Adobe Fresco, originally available only for the iPad, is now available for the iPhone 6S through the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It's a free download with a Starter Plan, but you'll either need to pay $9.99 a month or have an existing Adobe Creative Cloud account if you want premium features like custom brushes and to upgrade from 2 GB of cloud storage to 100 GB.

iPhone Adobe Fresco review: My favorite features of Adobe Fresco for iPhone

The fact that you get all of the same features on the iPhone version of Adobe Fresco as you do the iPad version is fantastic. It's also helpful that files created in Fresco can be opened on both iPhone and iPad, so you can start a project on your phone and then continue refining it on your iPad later or vice versa. For the purpose of this review, I only used it on an iPhone 12 as I wanted to see how it would be to sketch on a smaller screen.

One very helpful feature of Fresco is the smoothing adjustment on the brush tools. This helps to ease the shaky line work that may come from trying to draw on a phone. I tested this using both a traditional Wacom Bamboo stylus as well as my fingertip and it made my lines so much cleaner. You can fine-tune the amount of smoothing via a slider bar and through experimentation, so make sure to find the amount that best suits your style.

Adobe Fresco offers the features that you'd expect from a digital illustration app such as layers, blend modes, transform tools, brushes, color picker, two-finger tap to undo, image importing, etc., and they all work smoothly. Without going through any tutorials, I was able to immediately understand the software based on prior experience with other drawing apps. Since it syncs with your Creative Cloud account, your work automatically appears on any other device you're signed into with Fresco on it. This saves you the time of having to manually save files to the cloud and searching for them on other devices.

The app itself is polished and I only encountered one time where it crashed over a period of about five hours of using it. As far as Adobe mobile apps are concerned, it's one of my favorites to draw in because it's lightweight, but still full of features. I equate it to being Adobe's version of Procreate.

iPhone Adobe Fresco review: What I Don't Like About Fresco on the iPhone

While I do thoroughly enjoy drawing in Adobe Fresco on my 12.9-inch iPad Pro, using it on my iPhone 12 is kind of a lackluster experience. Maybe I'm just not accustomed to drawing with my fingertip or traditional stylus, or maybe I'm spoiled from using larger graphics tablets with pressure-sensitive pens, but drawing on a phone was pretty difficult. I'm sure I could get used to it with enough practice, but not having pressure sensitivity means a lot of extra steps of constantly adjusting the brush size, and the inaccuracy of drawing with a fingertip can be annoying.

While Fresco is free with a Starter Plan, if you want to unlock the premium features or have more cloud storage, you'll need to upgrade to paying at least $9.99 a month. While the Starter Plan may be sufficient for you, or maybe you already have a paid Adobe subscription, but that's $120 a year for everyone else. However, you do get access to Adobe Photoshop with the $9.99 per month fee, so that's something to take into account if you're worried about the value.

iPhone Adobe Fresco review: Final Verdict

Adobe Fresco is a polished drawing app for both iPad and now the iPhone. If you own both devices, it's a seamless experience to go from one to the other and having the option to use either is fantastic. Having the option to draw on the go on your iPhone is nice and you can always refine it later on the iPad. In that instance, I'd give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. However, if you only have an iPhone, drawing on the smaller screen without the benefit of an Apple Pencil can be cumbersome and time-consuming. If you're willing to take the time to master drawing on a pocket-sized device, it's a great app, but if you're not willing to put in that time, you may be disappointed with the results.

Pixelmator Photo, available from the App Store, is a photo editor for the iPad that offers a wide range of photo adjustments. While similar to Pixelmator, Pixelmator Photo focuses solely on photo editing by swapping out drawing and painting options for its advanced machine learning artificial intelligence.

My favorite features of Pixelmator Photo

A big draw of Pixelmator Photo for photographers is its full support for RAW photo editing from DSLR cameras and iPhones. Pair that with its ability to edit nondestructively, and it's a convenient tool to have on your iPad for photoshoots. I found this incredibly useful when I decided that I wanted to revert to the original copy of a photo I had edited in Pixelmator Photo. It was great knowing that the adjustments I had made days prior weren't permanent, and I could start over.

One of my favorite features in Pixelmator Photo is the comparison slider that allows you to compare the original photo against your current adjustments in real-time by moving a vertical slider across the image. It can be easy to forget how the original image started, so having a direct comparison is really nice.

Like in Pixelmator, Pixelmator Photo also has a healing brush that allows you to remove unwanted parts of images. I mostly use this tool to erase strangers that happen to be in background shots that I capture. Also, unlike Pixelmator, Pixelmator Photo supports the 2-finger tap to undo gesture, which helps speed up workflow.

Pixelmator Photo costs less than half of the price as Affinity Photo for the iPad, but that definitely doesn't mean it's half as good. When you're looking for a lightweight app with many options to edit your RAW images, Pixelmator Photo definitely fits that need. You won't find the vast number of options as you will in apps like Affinity Photo, but not every job requires those options, either.

What Pixelmator Photo Lacks

Pixelmator Photo is primarily focused on editing and adjusting photos nondestructively. It's not trying to be an application for painting or drawing, which is what Pixelmator is for, and it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of Affinity Photo for iPad. While it does have nice options for levels, curves, hue, saturation, contrast, built-in presets, etc., sometimes I want more options than what Pixelmator Photo has to offer. If you're a photographer who needs to do fine-detailed photo editing, Pixelmator Photo may not be the software for you.

Its Machine Learning artificial intelligence features are pretty innovative and can provide some really nice results, but other times can render some undesired output. This is to be expected of AI, and while I applaud Pixelmator Team for implementing such unique functionality into the app, it's not something that I personally utilize regularly. However, your mileage may vary, so I recommend testing it out for yourself.

Final Verdict

Pixelmator Photo is an app I have found myself gravitating to when I want to edit and adjust photos on the go with minimal fuss. While it is nice having more feature-heavy photo applications on my iPad, most of the time, I just want to fine-tune photos and share them quickly. Knowing that my changes made in Pixelmator Photo are nondestructive, I'm never worried about changing my mind later since I can always revert to the original image. The Machine Learning features are innovative, and even though I personally don't use them often, there are plenty of photographers who do.

Pixelmator, available from the App Store, is a full-featured photo editor for iOS that also allows you to sketch and paint your own artwork. Version 2.6 introduces 73 keyboard shortcuts that, when paired with the Magic Keyboard, closes the gap between editing photos on an iPad versus on a laptop.

My favorite new features of Pixelmator 2.6

Three of my favorite features of Pixelmator are the Repair Tool, Color Adjustments, and Effects options. With the Repair Tool, cleaning up an image and removing unwanted portions is really easy. You can draw over any of the unwanted areas in your photograph, and Pixelmator will automatically determine how to replace that area based on the rest of the image. In less than a minute, I was able to take a photo of some pumpkins and remove all the dirt from them as well as from the sidewalk and wall.

Using the Color Adjustment and Effects panels, I was also able to make the colors look more rich and vibrant with just a few screen taps. Now I pretty much run all of my photos through this process since it's quick and makes them look so much better. There are a wide variety of preset effects available in Pixelmator, but I usually stick with the more subtle ones just to make images pop a little more. As with any full-featured photo editing software, you can adjust the levels, curves, hue, saturation, contrast, etc. in minute detail and you're not limited to the pre-built effects provided.

Another nice feature of Pixelmator is its selection of templates. You can choose from collages, frames, cards, posters, photography effects, and vintage effects to get started if you have a particular project in mind. These can be useful when you want to combine multiple photos into a single collage or even to make cards for holidays and special events.

Where Pixelmator 2.6 Needs Improvement

As a professional illustrator, I'm always on the lookout for great digital illustration apps for my iPad Pro. Apps like Procreate, Affinity Designer and Photo, and ClipStudio have set the bar pretty high when it comes to drawing and painting on the iPad. Unfortunately, Pixelmator 2.6's painting functionality doesn't yet compare. Drawing in Pixelmator feels clunky and unintuitive, and the built-in brushes never feel like the ones I need or want to use.

When I want to change to a different brush, it's often a series of navigating through menus and experimenting to get the desired settings. I'll choose a brush, choose a category, select a brush, select the size, change the color, draw a line to see how it looks, undo, change settings, and so on.

One major missing feature is the ability to two-finger tap to undo. This has become standard in most drawing applications and is even integrated into Pixelmator Photo, but has oddly been omitted from Pixelmator 2.6. It doesn't seem like a big deal initially, but when you're constantly testing and tweaking paintbrushes, having to tap an Undo button in the upper-left corner grows old very quickly. Cmd+Z on the Magic Keyboard can be used as a shortcut to undo, but if you're drawing, you may not want to have the keyboard attached.

Overall Impressions

When it comes to touching up and editing photos, it's easy to use and has a lot of nice features. However, if you're looking for an app for digital illustration, Pixelmator still has a lot of growing to do. The brushes are limited and the user interface makes it feel like there's a barrier between you and the artwork you want to create. On the other hand, if you're looking for a great app to edit your photos, Pixelmator 2.6 is definitely worth checking out.

Savage Interactive's Procreate, available from the App Store, is some of the best digital illustration software I've ever used, not only for iOS, but also on any platform. With their latest 5X update, they've not only improved upon existing features, but also added new ones that users like myself have been asking for.

New features such as snapping, a reference companion, and color palette capturing have been on my wishlist for a while, and 5X brings them all to fruition. However, it also adds things that I didn't even know I wanted, such as being able to control image adjustments precisely with an Apple Pencil and additional quick menus.

My favorite new features of 5X

For me, being able to have complete control over image adjustment filters by using an Apple Pencil is amazing, especially when applying something like Gaussian Blur or the new Bloom effect. Instead of having to apply the effect to an entire layer, I can precisely draw where I want the effect to be. When I do want to apply the effect to the entire layer, 5X now gives me more detailed control over the image adjustments.

I've also been enjoying using the halftone image adjustment option to give my webcomics a more newspaper-like feel to them. On the opposite spectrum, Procreate 5X's new glitch effect is great when I want parts of my drawings to have a more digital artifact look. Both features weren't something I was asking for, but I'm glad to have them available depending on the style of a particular piece.

I have been relying heavily on the new reference companion to both view reference images and to always have a full view of my work in progress. When working on the fine details of a drawing, I'm constantly zooming in and out to make sure it looks how I want it to when viewed at 100%. However, with the Canvas option of the reference companion, this is no longer required, as I always have a full view of my canvas.

Plus, having an easy way to display a reference image directly in Procreate is incredibly useful. Before the 5X update, I either had to split the iPad screen between Procreate and the Photos app to view a reference image, or I'd have to import the photo and then shrink it down to fit onto the canvas. Now, using the Image option in the reference companion, I always have the photo in a window that I can drag out of the way as needed. This frees up valuable screen real estate and it's great having an integrated solution.

When I want to use the exact colors of my reference image, I import the photo into the new Color Palette Capture tool and it creates a new palette for me. Or if I'm on the go with my iPad, I can capture a new color palette from the camera. When using the camera, a 10x3 block of squares appears on the screen and populates a color in each square based on what the camera is capturing. I can move the camera around to capture the exact set of colors I want and then name the palette accordingly. Prior to this new feature being available, I used to have to import a photo onto the canvas, create a new color palette, eye drop a color from the image and add it to the palette, eye drop another color, and so on. This was tedious and time-consuming, so I'm very thankful to be able to have Procreate create palettes for me.

Smaller, new features in 5X that make my life a little easier are things like the implementation of snapping and additional quick menus. Snapping allows me to easily center objects on the canvas or in relation to other objects This is a pretty common feature found in other drawing applications, so I'm really happy to see Procreate include it in 5X. Quick Menus are something that I actually just started using recently, and I'm glad that I can now add multiple menus based on the stages of drawing I'm at. For example, I have specific quick actions set up depending if I'm sketching, inking, painting, or adding finishing touches to a piece.

Also, the fact that Procreate 5X works with iOS 14's Scribble feature lets me quickly create text and rename layers/quick menus/color palettes by using my handwriting with the Apple Pencil instead of having to use the onscreen keyboard. Little housekeeping items like these make 5X enjoyable and easier to use.

Features I haven't found a use for yet

Some of the new features in the 5X update might be very useful for some artists, but they go mostly unused in my workflow. FacePaint is probably my least utilized option, as I haven't found a practical use for it. It projects the canvas in real-time onto the user's face using the front-facing camera. This could be useful for makeup artists, but it hasn't reached beyond a novelty in my daily use of Procreate.

I also haven't used gradient mapping as much as I thought I would. It can be a great tool when you want to change the overall look and tone of your artwork or to add color to a grayscale image, but I haven't needed to use it yet.

Chromatic Aberration also seems like a way to add some cool effects to artwork, but unless I was looking for a reason to specifically use it, I don't think I'd ever really use it. That being said, I have seen some really amazing pieces by artists on social media that have utilized it and I'm pretty impressed.

Final Verdict

Overall, I'm really happy with all of the new features Procreate has brought with its free 5X update. The small additions like snapping and being able to fine-tune image adjustments with an Apple Pencil are very welcomed and the larger updates like the reference companion and color palette capture tool make it a joy to use.

Although I personally haven't used things like FacePaint, Chromatic Aberration, and Gradient Mapping much, I know there are a lot of artists who are creating magnificent works of art with those tools, which goes to show that Procreate 5X has something for everyone's workflows.

What you need to know

• Lake Coloring has reduced the price of a yearly subscription by 80%.
• The "Stay-at-home" offer is available now to new and free tiered existing users.
• The offer is for a limited time and comes from a heartwarming place.

Today, I received an email from Lake Coloring's co-founder (and winner of a Future Tech 2020 award), Katarina Lotrič to tell me about a sale that the company is launching. Because they've seen a "significant rise in daily app usage, downloads, and shares on social media," they've decided to discount Lake Coloring by approximately 80% in order to help more people get the benefit of relaxing while coloring.

Download now

From the App Store summary of the latest update:

I've always loved Lake Coloring Books for a number of reasons, one of which is that Lake Coloring fully supports independent artists and illustrators by sharing part of every subscription fee with them. The company started with just 10 artists and now has more than 800 illustrations by different artists and the largest collection of coloring books by independent illustrators. After just a year in business, Lake Coloring Books won an Apple Design Award in 2017, and it is well-deserved.

The fact that Lake Coloring is dropping the price of its yearly subscription by 80% while we're all going through some rough times is honestly enough to make me cry.

Check out Lake Coloring on iPhone and iPad (I prefer it on iPad, but will sometimes use it on my iPhone in a pinch). It's free to download and comes with a freebie package you can try out.

Download now

Serif Labs, the creators of Affinity Photo for Mac and Windows, launched an iPad version of its popular Affinity Photo image editor last year to much acclaim. Now, the company is has officially launched its other major app, Affinity Designer, on the iPad as well. It's an incredibly cool app for designers on the go, and it's just as feature-packed as Affinity Photo.

Here's everything you need to know about Affinity Designer for iPad.

What is Affinity Designer for iPad?

Affinity Designer is vector graphics design software, allowing you to create original concept art, logos, typography, UIs, digital paintings, and pretty much anything else your imaginative heart desires. Just like with Affinity Photo, Serif Labs has brought as many of Designer's desktop capabilities to the iPad in a mobile-friendly fashion.

So there's already a version of Affinity Designer for Mac?

Yes indeed. Affinity Designer serves as a competitor to apps like Adobe Illustrator, and is available on the Mac App Store now.

• $49.99 - Download Now

What features does Affinity Designer have on the iPad?

• Smooth vector tools: Affinity Designer for iPad offers vector tools that allow you to create with, and I quote, "pinpoint precision." You can pretty much do everything vector-wise that you can do in the Mac version of the app, like drawing and manipulating nodes and Bezier handles, dividing and combining shapes using non-destructive Booleans, and more. Affinity Designer for iPad also boasts vector brushes, stabilization for freehand vector drawing, 1,000,000% zoom, fluid and customizable shape creation — I could seriously go on and on. Basically, if you prefer to bring your ideas to life using vector, you're set.
• Built-in Pixel Persona: With Affinity Designer for iPad, you can seamlessly switch between vector and raster, allowing you to sketch, paint, and make pixel selections without ever needing to leave the app.
• Over 100 brushes: If you're more of a traditionalist (or like to incorporate more traditional elements in your designs), don't worry, Affinity Designer for iPad has you covered too. The app has a pretty sizable library of brushes, giving you paints, pencils, inks, pastels and gouaches. You can even customize them, tweaking the Touch or Apple Pencil dynamics to better suit your artistic style.
• Complete color and layer control: Affinity Designer for iPad truly makes you the master of your own creative destiny. Color-wise, the app offers support for all major formats, 16-bit per channel editing, ICC color management, a smart color picker, and spot colors for professional printing. You can also make super gorgeous gradients, too. Layer-wise, Affinity Designer also gives you a plethora of tools to work with, including non-destructive adjustment layers, live blend modes, and layer effects like shadows, glows, 3D, and bevel. Oh yeah, and you can work on "huge designs, with 1,000s of layers." Thousands of layers.
• Overwhelmingly cool typography tools: Love hand-lettering? What about customizing pre-existing fonts to fit your needs? No matter your typographical proclivities, Affinity Designer totally delivers. With guides and grids galore as well as kerning, tracking, leading, framing, and tons of other font-related capabilities, you can get the message across in whatever way grooves with your vision.
• UI design capabilities: Live pixel preview, simultaneous symbol editing, artboard and icon creation, slice exporting — Affinity Designer for iPad has a ton of features that allow you to craft UIs with major flexibility.
• Created specifically for iPad: Sure, Affinity Designer was created for the Mac first, but Serif has pretty much rebuilt it from the ground up to work in tandem with your iPad and all the cool stuff it can do. It's fully optimized for iOS 11 (so yes, that means drag and drop), is super fast thanks to iPad's Metal technology, offers multi-touch control, and supports the magic wand of all iPad illustrators, the Apple Pencil.

For an exhaustive list of features, you can check out Serif Labs' dedicated Affinity Designer for iPad page here.

What about file support?

According to Serif, Affinity Designer has the most advanced export capability ever seen on iPad. When you're ready to export your masterpiece, your file options are as follows:

• EPS
• PSD
• SVG
• PDF
• JPG
• PNG
• TIFF
• GIF

How much will Affinity Designer for iPad cost? How can I get it?

Affinity Designer for iPad is currently priced at an ultra-affordable $13.99 — a special introductory offer that's 30% off the full price of $19.99. You can get it for your device now by tapping the link below!

• Affinity Designer for iPad - $13.99 - Download now

Questions?

Have any burning Affinity Designer questions you need answered ASAP? Leave them in the comments below, and we'll do our best to help you out!

Astro HQ has just announced a major update to its iPad mirroring apps, Astropad Studio and Astropad Standard. Both apps are now compatible with Luna Display. Luna Display is a USB-C or Mini DisplayPort dongle that works as a Wi-Fi supported second screen mirroring device for your Mac and iPad. Combining the power of Astropad with the wireless capabilities of Luna Display and you're talking about a seriously powerful system for turning your iPad into a touchscreen Mac.

Once updated, Astropad Studio 2.0 and Astropad 2.4 will support Luna Display. All you have to do is plug the dongle into your Mac's USB-C or Mini DisplayPort port and Astropad will automatically recognize your iPad as a second screen. Done and done.

You're probably wondering how to get your hands on a Luna Display. Don't worry, they're not yet available to the general public. You can, however, preorder one right now for $69.99.

See at Luna Display

There's one more thing — Astropad will phase out support for third-party styluses by the end of 2018. It's nothing personal. The company simply weighed the difficulties in continuing support for styluses that aren't used as often across its apps versus the Apple Pencil, which is currently used by about 98% of stylus users in Astropad apps. It's really a no-brainer.

You can find out more details about why Astropad is dropping support for third-party styluses on its Astroblog.

The phaseout will roll out gradually over the next few months and will be complete by the end of 2018.

If you didn't get in early for the Luna Display crowdfunding campaign, you can preorder one now with an estimated shipping date of January 2019.

Preorder at Luna Display

Today, developer Savage launched the latest version of Procreate Pocket, one of the most popular digital illustration and painting apps for iPhone. However, don't call it an update: Procreate Pocket 2.0 is essentially an all-new app that has been redesigned from the ground up to incorporate 64-bit color, gigantic canvas resolutions up to 8K, over 100 new handcrafted brushes, and more.

Procreate Pocket 2 is now powered by Silica M — the super speedy graphics engine that Procreate for iPad already uses — and offers an entirely new intuitive interface optimized for iPhone X users complete with full support for haptic feedback, P3 Color, and 3D Touch. With PP2, individuals can comfortably use the app no matter where they are, controlling it with multi-touch gestures to undo, redo, zoom, and invoke more complex features without taking any focus away from the art itself.

Tool-wise, PP2 supplies you with over a hundred new handcrafted brushes including different types of pencils, calligraphy pens, paint brushes, and spray paints that will allow you to truly adhere to your distinct style. The app also an advanced layering system for non-destructive editing, advanced selections, powerful transform options, customisable perspective guides, and impressive filters and adjustments like exclusive perspective blur, gaussian and motion blur, realtime hue and saturation adjustments — I'm sure you can tell from all of these commas that I could go on. The update is so feature-heavy that it's near-impossible to summarize. You can even input RGB, HSB, or HEX values for exact color matching.

When you're finished with your piece (which you'll no longer need to manually save due to PP2's continuous autosave feature), you can export it in pretty much whatever file format your heart desires depending on what's best for your individual project. What's more, you can export to any connected location, including AirDrop-capable devices, Files, iCloud Drive, Photos, iTunes, Twitter, Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, Weibo and Mail. And, if you want to fine-tune your creation on a larger screen, you can share it to your iPad version of Procreate seamlessly.

So, is your inner illustrator begging to be let out yet? If so, you can download Procreate Pocket for $4.99 on the App Store by tapping the link below.

• Procreate Pocket 2 - $4.99 - Download now

Thoughts?

What do you think of the additions to Procreate Pocket? Share your favorite new features with us in the comments below. And, if you want, send a tweet our way sharing your favorite piece you've created using the app!

According to a blog post, version 49 of Bohemian Coding's popular digital design app Sketch is rolling out today, and it features a plethora of improvements and bug fixes — including Apple's official UI design resource for iOS 11.

Prototyping

Okay, so your design looks great. But will it actually work well? Now, with Prototyping, you can find out for sure. Prototyping for Sketch allows you to transform your static designs into interactive, clickable prototypes, allowing you to preview them thoroughly without ever needing to leave the app. You can even use Mirror, Sketch's iOS counterpart app, to see how your design looks and functions on the mobile device it's made for. If you're looking for a second opinion, you can also share your demo with colleagues, clients, and whoever else may like to weigh in. Here's how to use the feature, according to Bohemian Coding:

You can find out more about Prototyping in Sketch's support documentation.

Apple iOS UI Library

Another exciting feature of Sketch 49 is the addition of an integrated Apple iOS UI Library, complete with Apple's official iOS 11 design template. When designing any project for an Apple device, access to the Apple iOS UI Library is invaluable. it includes everything you need to make sure your work coincides with Apple's UI, "from tab bars and status bars to buttons and switches."

All you need to do to download the Library is navigate to the Libraries tab in Preferences and select it. The best part: when Apple updates UI documentation, you'll be notified, and you can then update your designs to the latest version so you won't ever lag behind.

Shared Libraries in Sketch Cloud

When you download Sketch, you also get free access to Sketch Cloud, where you can view, download, and comment on Sketch documents which have been shared publicly or privately. All this happens within the Sketch app. Now, though, you can now subscribe to specific Documents uploaded to Sketch Cloud and they'll be added directly to Sketch, as Shared Libraries:

Bug fixes and other feedback-based improvements

In addition to the big cool features, there are also a ton of small cool features and bug fixes that come along with this update. Here are the highlights, according to Bohemian Coding:

• The performance of the app as a whole has been massively improved, especially when working in complex documents with many nested Symbols.
• When vector editing, you can now bend a path segment by holding the Command key and dragging to create or adjust curves.
• When using the Pen tool, a preview of new points will be displayed on hover.

For an exhaustive and hyper-detailed list of improvements and bug fixes, you can check out Sketch's update page.

If you're looking for a full-featured digital design toolkit to add to your creative arsenal, you can try Sketch for free by downloading it directly from the developer using the link below (Sketch was removed from the Mac App Store back in 2015). Once your trial is up, though, you'll need to pay $99 for a license. Note that if you're a student or teacher you get 50% off a Sketch license, so make sure to take advantage of that option if you qualify.

• Sketch - Free Trial - Download now

Questions?

Have any questions regarding Sketch? Toss 'em in the comments below.

A bare-bones subscription to Adobe Photoshop will run you roughly $120 a year. The pared-down Photoshop Elements costs around $100. Even a well-regarded rival like Pixelmator will set you back $30 — a pretty steep ask if you just want to make a quick birthday card for your significant other.

So please, nobody tell Adobe about the surprisingly robust market for free Photoshop-alike programs that run entirely in your web browser.

None completely matches Photoshop's features, and some are definitely better than others. But whether you use Photoshop to tweak photos, create art, or design Web mockups or printed materials, you'll likely find a web-based tool that provides enough of its abilities at a reasonable $0 price tag. After testing a number of online image editors, I've found three that come closest to Photoshop in power and ease of use.

SumoPaint

If you use Photoshop primarily to draw or paint, give SumoPaint a look. With a clean interface and unobtrusive ads, it won't cause you needless aggravation. It offers a solid array of different brushes to paint with, plus strong vector drawing tools, support for layers, and a nifty faux-ink tool.

SumoPaint doesn't score as well on photo editing, text, or design. The clone tool works, which wasn't always the case with the subjects of this roundup — but in my tests, it didn't work in real time. You won't see what you've done until after you've finished. The same applies to the smudge and blur tools. The text tool can use locally installed fonts, but once you've created text, you can't re-edit it.

SumoPaint also doesn't offer guides or rulers, and it can't open or save to Photoshop files. Like the next item on this list, SumoPaint also runs in Flash, which may not work for you if you're concerned about Flash's security or power and memory usage. If you're doing anything but painting, SumoPaint probably isn't your best choice — and even if you are painting, you may like the next option better.

Pixlr

If SumoPaint's interface recalls Photoshop 10 years ago, Pixlr looks a lot more modern. Pixlr can open Photoshop's PSD files, complete with all their layers, and its photo editing tools are more robust than SumoPaint's, including a color replace tool and an effective spot healing brush for cleaning up specks and scratches. I found its roster of filters extensive and impressive, and it has plenty of tools to fine-tune your images' levels, hue and saturation, and more.

If you work extensively with brushes in Photoshop, you'll love Pixlr's ability to load those sets for its own use. You can also create and save your own brush sets to supplement Pixlr's abundant library.

Text editing works well, aside from having to type your text into a little dialog box, rather than seeing it appear as you type right in your design. You can re-edit text anytime you like, and Pixlr can access all your locally stored fonts.

I had less luck with the clone tool, which simply didn't seem to work no matter how many times I control-clicked to set a point from which to copy. Pixlr also lacks any vector-drawing tools — not something you'll miss if you're used to bitmap-based Photoshop, but nice to have nonetheless.

Like SumoPaint, Pixlr falls short for more intensive design work. You won't find rulers or guides here, either. You can't edit text in any PSDs you import into Pixlr. And you can't export your work as a layered PSD. I also found Pixlr's ads more intrusive than any of the other items in this list, and I couldn't get it to open files from my computer in Safari; I had to switch to Chrome to enable that.

Photopea

When you use Photopea, you can almost feel Adobe's copyright lawyers sitting up straighter in their chairs. Though it's not quite a perfect replica, Photopea does a remarkable job of imitating nearly everything you know and love about Photoshop.

Even more impressively, Photopea doesn't require you to set up an account before you use it (though you can, to sync and share work across platforms). And it doesn't use Flash, working its magic entirely via HTML5. That means it works just fine in Safari. Supposedly it has ads, but I never saw one.

Photopea both opens and saves .psd files. It fully supports guides, whether they're already in a document you've imported, or you're creating new ones yourself. You can edit text in imported Photoshop documents, too, and clone, smudge, dodge, burn, or blur in real time, using many of the same Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. The spot healing feature works handily, too.

Across the board, Photopea lacks some of Pixlr or SumoPaint's bells and whistles but compensates by covering the basics well. You won't find a ton of different brushes or filters here — nor the ability to add your own — but you'll have enough to get the majority of tasks done without a problem. Photopea throws in a few respectable vector drawing tools, too.

There's only one potential speedbump I found with Photopea: It can't access your local fonts. It offers hundreds of fonts of its own, including more than a few popular choices I recognized from Google Fonts. But if you've imported a document that contains fonts it doesn't have, you'll have to change those typefaces if you want to edit that text.

Good enough to get the job done

I doubt any of these editors — even Photopea, the best of the bunch in my opinion — could replace Photoshop for full-time professional work. But for occasional touch-ups or fun personal projects, all of them make a lot more sense than shelling out $100 or more for the real thing.

Got any other favorite web-based image editors we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

Lake Coloring Book is one of my favorite coloring book apps and the reason is that the company works directly with independent artists to provide beautiful illustrations for all of us to enjoy coloring. Every artist is unique and brings a different aesthetic to my experience. I love seeing what new designs get added and how I'm going to create my masterpiece. Recently Lake Coloring teamed up with independent fabric designer Spoonflower to let us turn our own coloring creations into fabric, art, and even wrapping paper.

It gets better. Lake Coloring has also joined with the developers of the stylish puzzle game Two Dots to bring some fun new illustrations to Lake Coloring Book.

Dots, the creative team behind Two Dots, are "an eclectic mix of illustrators, musicians, animators, designers, engineers, and creative spirits." I haven't met any of them, but that's how they're described by the press release I received about them (all of the soundtracks to their games have been composed by the talented Upright T-Rex Music. From what their illustrations look like in the Lake Coloring Book app I'd have to agree. I'm pretty sure we'd have a lot of fun getting ramen together in the City.

The free 12 Two Dots illustrations are based on the background maps in the game. Make friends with a Yeti, adventure with an owl, and rocket through space in a Jules Vern style submarine. Seriously, these illustrations are adorable.

If you upload your creations and tag @lakecoloring and @twodots to your soch meeds, you might get a feature in the Two Dots game. Plus, as a special launch celebration, you could win a Two Dots in-game premium upgrade or a year's subscription to Lake. Not bad for just coloring in a coloring book.

Spoonflower makes patterns into fabrics and paper (wall or wrapping). The company specializes in providing printed works by independent artists, but it also lets you upload your own design.

There are currently 16 patterns in Spoonflower's package that you can color yourself and then get a physical printing of. Something really cool about using a Spoonflower pattern is that it automatically fills in the colors of any repeats so you don't have to color every separate illustration.

Once you've finished coloring, you'll be able to upload the pattern to Spoonful's order page right within the Lake Coloring Book app. From there, you can choose what you want it printed on to. You can get a small 5" X 5" swath of cloth, or multiple yards of a variety of fabrics so you can literally make a dress out of your own, personally colored pattern.

With the artistic collaboration from Two Dots and the teaming up with Spoonflower, there's lots to do in the Lake Coloring Book app. If you don't already own it, you should download it right now. It's free and comes with one free illustration every day. You can also subscribe to have access to all of the coloring books for $2.99 per week, $7.99 per month, or $59.99 per year. If you're not into subscribing for all-access, you can purchase coloring books from individual artists, too (part of your coloring book purchase goes directly to the artist that created it).

• Free - Download now

Note that this feature is experimental, so even if you are an individual from the areas in which it is available you may not be able to access it at this time.

Unless you've been living under a rock (or, you know, living a healthy, social-media-free life, which is totally cool too), you've likely seen the photos floating around fairly recently of individuals standing in museums next to their uncanny art doppelgängers. And, as a result, you've probably had at least one passing thought about whether or not your art twin is out there in oil paint somewhere. Thankfully, Google's Arts & Culture app has made an effort to turn the look-alike search digital with a new experimental feature, saving you the price of world travel and museum admission fees.

• Google Arts & Culture - Free - Download now

Essentially, the app uses facial recognition technology to create a scan of your face, identifying characteristics unique to you (like the size of your eyes or the space between your nose and mouth). It then attempts to match those features to the collection of over 70,000 paintings and other pieces of art in its database.

The feature is now available in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore and parts of the U.S. Here's how to use it!

1. Download the app using the link above.
2. Launch the app from your home screen.
3. Scroll down until you see Is your portrait in a museum?
4. Tap Get Started.
5. If you're okay with sending your photo to Google in order to find art that looks like you, tap I Accept. (You won't be able to use the feature otherwise.)

6. Position your face within the frame and tap the large circle underneath Take a photo to take a selfie for the app to analyze. If you're not feeling very photogenic, you can also tap the camera icon in the top right corner to switch from the front-facing camera to the normal one and take a photo of an image of yourself on your computer (which is what I did).
7. After allowing the app a few seconds to analyze your face and compare it to historical artworks, swipe left to view your results.
8. Ta-da! You'll be shown a handful of art pieces Google thinks share your facial features. You'll also get the title of the painting, the artist, and where it's located if you ever decide you'd like to go visit it to compare IRL.
9. If you'd like to show your newfound twin to your friends, tap Share in the bottom left corner of the screen and then select whatever social media app you'd like to post your result to.

Though some people are receiving some pretty dead-on matches, Google's algorithm isn't perfect, so unfortunately you may end up getting some art that doesn't look very much like you. Or, you know, that may actually insult you a little. Case in point: my results were a pretty mixed bag.

So, is your art universe counterpart a gorgeous Reubens babe? A bored shepherd boy? A stoic aristocrat? Go forth and find out!

Questions?

What do you think of your doppelgänger? Share your experience with us in the comments!

Popular drawing app Paper has received an important update, one that introduces a new look on both iPhone and iPad, with a new sidebar that makes your journals and projects easier to find, along with a new built-in search feature. The app now also lets you easily access the Cut tool while using FiftyThree's Pencil stylus or the Apple Pencil.

Paper 3.6 for iPhone and iPad features the following.

You'll find Paper 3.6 on the App Store now.

• Free - Download Now

Paper, the popular drawing app for iPhone and iPad from FiftyThree, has been updated. Version 3.5 introduces smart text formatting, as well as a new way to format manually. Paper now also has its own sharing extension.

With smart text formatting, Paper will automatically center your text as you start typing. Press return, and the text will left-justify. You can switch text format between title, sub-title, paragraph, bullet, and sub-bullet by swiping on your text. Swipe to the left for larger text, and to the right for smaller text.

After you enable the share extension, you'll be able to share photos, text, and more with Paper from any app that supports the iOS share sheet. When you share, you'll be given options for the destination notebook for the item. Open that notebook in the app to find your photo or text alongside your other work.

You can grab Paper 3.5 from the App Store now.

• Free - Download Now

FiftyThree has updated its Paper app, adding templates, making a number of other improvements, and tweaking the design a bit. Templates are presented whenever you create a new space, and allow you to quickly get started on a project, be it a presentation, design concept, or notebook.

Here's what you'll find in Paper 3.4:

• Circular Space covers have been removed. The first Idea in each Space will always be centered on top of your Home View stacks.
• The Home View got another round of visual polish. "Looking sharp, Home View!"
• Move between pages while editing. Auto add a new page when you run out. Just swipe with two fingers left and right.
• Scroll overflowing text content without entering the edit mode.
• Preview the Image portion of an Idea while you are editing the text.
• Multiple photo import from the camera roll into a Space.
• Starter template content for your Spaces: presentations, notes, storyboards and more.
• Cancel a new blank Idea instead of automatically saving it.
• Bug fixes.

Paper 3.4 is available on the App Store now.

• Free - Download Now

Bohemian Coding, the developer behind the popular Mac design app Sketch, has announced that it will be pulling the app from the Mac App Store. While users who purchased through the Mac App Store will of course be able to continue using the app, it will no longer be updated through the store.

As for why Sketch is leaving the store, Bohemian provided the following explanation on the Sketch blog:

The developers hope that by offering Sketch directly will lead to a better overall user experience.

If you purchased Sketch on the Mac App Store, and wish to switch to Bohemian Coding's direct download, you won't need to purchase the app again. Simply download the app from the developer, replace the App Store version in your Applications folder, and enter your email address to receive your license key. If you're a new Sketch user, by the way, you can get a free trial of the app from Bohemian Coding, after which you'll need to pay $99.

You can read more about the decision at the link below.

Source: Sketch blog

This new release of QuarkXpress adds a number of new features to make the application faster and more powerful, including support for OS X Yosemite. QuarkXpress now has a 64-bit architecture, along with support for PDF/X-4 Output. There are also new automation tools, new options for ebooks, and more.

Check out the major changes below:

• 64-bit Architecture: QuarkXPress 2015 can now use all the RAM available on a user's computer to deliver performance improvements across the board from file handling and layout rendering to PDF export. Quark has also added multi-threading to the QuarkXPress text engine to further increase performance.
• PDF/X-4 Output: By using this latest standard, designers can maintain transparency to enable smaller files, faster output and higher quality print output. The exported PDF/X-4 files are certified by the same technology used inside Adobe Acrobat.
• Designer-controlled Automation: From the early days of style sheets, master pages, indexes and tables of content to more recent additions such as shared content, conditional styles and callouts, Quark has always focused on automation. QuarkXPress 2015 builds on this with:
  • Automatic footnotes and endnotes
  • A new, faster table tool for Excel integration with table styles
  • Text variables for automatically populating reoccurring fields – such as running headers
• Fixed Layout eBooks with App-like Interactivity: QuarkXPress 2015 combines the best of reflowable eBooks (ePub) with interactive apps for a new digital output format. Users can create HTML5 fixed layout eBooks without any additional software or costs. The fixed layout eBook format (ePub3 or Amazon's KF8), displays pixel-perfect layouts without the complexity and cost of creating native apps.

There are also smaller additions and improvements, like a new orthogonal line tool, custom page sizes, and user-definable keyboard shortcuts.

QuarkXpress 2015 is available now. New users can purchase the software for $849, while current owners can upgrade from any previous version of $349.

• $849 - Download Now

Free backups of all of your Paper journals are now available to anyone with a free FiftyThree account. Backups are secure, and remain viewable only to you. With backups, you can easily restore work that has been deleted, or easily bring in your old work to a new iPad.

This update also adds the Activity Center for the Mix social drawing service. The Activity Center shows all activity related to you and the work you've shared on Mix. You'll see if someone likes your ideas, who remixes them, and who follows you.

Because of continually falling numbers, Paper will no longer support the Pogo Connect Bluetooth stylus in version 2.4.1. FiftyThree currently offers their own Pencil stylus, which starts at $49.95, for those that need to switch. The update also fixes a number of bugs.

You can download Paper 2.4.1 from the App Store now.

• Free - Download Now

Tumult's Hype — an HTML5 WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web and animation editor — is approaching its four-year anniversary in May, and what a way it has chosen to celebrate: The company is releasing a major update for its professional and prosumer users in the form of Hype Pro, packaged inside the all-new Hype 3 as a $49.99 upgrade.

I've had so much fun testing Hype Pro over the last few months: It's an excellent upgrade for longtime Hype users, and I suspect it may draw in quite a few new pro users, as well.

Why is Hype worth the hype?

If you ever fancied yourself an animator, like building responsive websites but hate the reams of CSS code it often requires, or want to prototype iOS games, Hype is quite simply one of the best apps in its class.

Tumult's awesome how-to documentation makes it easy to get started, and animating is a cinch for anyone who understands keyframe- or recording-based workflows. (Even if you don't, it's a pretty easy process to pick up: Hype's YouTube tutorial on the subject is super-helpful if you're curious.)

The company also offers a free trial if you want to toy around with Hype and get to know its controls and workflows.

As someone who hates writing JavaScript or tweaking existing scripts, Hype is a godsend for creating quick animations for all sorts of things — a quick logo for my roller derby league, animated images in iBooks Author, and cute little HTML5 cards for my friends on their birthdays. The below video I created with Hype 2.5 last year, and it tells a short little story from a children's book I've been working on.

Hype also has a whole gallery showcasing what other people have done with the app, in case you're curious.

Hype 3: A pretty good upgrade in its own right

If you owned Hype 2, you'll get Hype 3 as a free upgrade, and it's packed with several great improvements. (For new users, Hype 3 is $49.99.) The interface has been completely redone and feels much more in line with OS X Yosemite; it also feels more streamlined — I was able to find tools and build animations with much more precision than in Hype 2 or 2.5.

There are also a bunch of other little things in this update, including 24 new timing functions, you can independently create scene sizes, you can copy and paste and rearrange timelines, there are some more accessibility improvements in the underlying HTML code, and lots of bug fixes.

Hiding in plain sight: Hype Professional

Since its inception, Hype has offered consumer-to-prosumer-level tools for building animations. They're excellent, but they always felt a bit more iMovie than Final Cut — designed for simplicity with occasional power underneath.

Hype 3 changes the game entirely: With a $49.99 in-app purchase, you can activate Hype Pro, which adds so many brilliant features I'm going to find it hard not to cheer over each one. With Hype 3, Tumult has essentially packaged the Final Cut of web editors and hid it within its baseline iMovie-style client: It's a devilishly smart move from the company, and one I bet will pay off.

Price Hype Pro at $100, and you have lots of people unwilling to give it a shot. I get that — it's hard to justify dropping $100 on a new workflow. But price Hype 3 at $50 with a free trial, and you get a lot of the good stuff off the bat; add another $50, and you have some truly pro-level features at your disposal.

So what exactly makes Hype Professional so cool? Lots of things, but the real wow marquee feature for me is Physics: It uses behind-the-scenes CSS3 and JavaScript magic to give natural motion and weight to any object in your timeline.

I built a quick silly game for the iPhone in about twenty minutes using the Physics engine; though it's nothing fancy, it's crazy how easy it was for me to construct. It really does put creativity in the forefront in lieu of having to know any sort of in-depth code.

There are lots of other fantastic features that you unlock with the Hype Professional upgrade, including fully responsive layouts, reusable templates, dark interfaces, being able to rearrange the interface, editable timing functions, persistent symbols across scenes, and more. It's a heck of an upgrade, and an especially-welcome one for those who have been using Hype for some time now.

Bottom line

Hype serves a niche audience in the Mac community, but it does so with aplomb — and both Hype 3 and Hype Professional's features look to keep that community happy and working for years to come. If you haven't given Hype a try and it sounds like a tool you might be able to use in your workflow, check out their free trial. You won't regret it.

When I reviewed ArtRage some of you asked me to take a look Art Set Pro as well. Since I'm not one to back down from a challenge, I coughed up the $6.99 and downloaded myself a copy. So, was it worth it? Well…

At first glance, Art Set Pro looks fantastic. In fact, I couldn't wait to launch it and play with it. It has all of the tools one would expect from any portable art program and the interface looks nice. But, at least for me, it falls short compared to other apps I've used in the past.

There are a wide range of tools available from pencils and pens to brushes and pastel. In addition, Art Set Pro includes tools for blending. Plus, it has a decent color mixer and customizable palette. All fantastic features. And, even more fantastic is how the tools are accessed. All of the tools are neatly tucked away in what feels like a tiny digital wooden art set.

Sadly, though, your options are limited when it comes to tool settings. In fact, the only options that I could find were for the paint brush tool. That's it! Nothing else. And trust me… I looked and looked and looked. But, alas, my quest turned up empty.

Granted, it's nice to be able to choose whether or not to manually load the paint brush rather than having it done automatically, but why not provide options for setting the stroke size (width) for the pens, pencils, crayons, and other tools? This frustrated me probably a lot more than it should.

Another thing that bugged me was that all of the tools "felt" the same. With other apps I've used, there's a different feeling when using the oil based paints versus using the water colors and crayons. This app didn't give me that same feeling. Each tool felt and reacted almost the identical. Sure, they looked a little different, but it just didn't sit right with me.

Although I like the looks of the tool drawer, after using it for a while, switching between the different tools and colors became to feel clumsy and awkward.

While Art Set is fun to use, and I enjoyed playing with it, I don't think it's going to be given a permanent home on my device. Is it worth the download? Eh, I don't think I can give you an answer. Art apps are very much like art - their subjective. I know folks who love this app and won't touch anything else. But, for me… it's one I'll pass over for something else.

Ambient Design, Ltd., a New Zealand based company, is the developer behind ArtRage. According to their website, "ArtRage gives you real world painting tools on your computer in a stylish, easy to use environment that lets you get down to the process of creating without digital distractions." I needed to see this in action, so I decided to check it out. But, as a die-hard Adobe and Toon Boom user, I wasn't exactly sure if I would find ArtRage useful. As it turns out, it's a pretty cool app.

• ArtRage for Mac or Windows - Download now
• ArtRage for iPad - Download now
• ArtRage for iPhone - Download now

ArtRage for Mac

Of the tools available in ArtRage, I love the Natural Painting Tools the most. Each one behaves like the real thing. The Oil Brush creates realistic strokes of paint which can be blended with other colors. While the Paint Tube allows you to squeeze out blobs of paint that can be spread with the Palette Knife. Using the Watercolor Brush and the Airbrush, you'll be able to bring your canvas to life by adding translucent strokes and fine sprays of paints.

Another great feature of ArtRage is its canvas. There are a variety of Canvas Presets from which you may choose. Or, you can customize some of the Canvas Properties (texture and roughness, to name a few) to give your canvas a personal touch. You can also add a color bitmap to your canvas, or remove all of the textures and make the surface transparent.

With the range of tools available in ArtRage, and the ease with which these tools may be used, you'll be digitally painting happy little tress in no time. Bob Ross (https://www.bobross.com/) would be proud!

The interface, however, was a little strange at first. While the important functions and tools are front-and-center, the application uses something referred to as Pods to keep the deeper functions out of the way until you're ready to use them. Navigating your way through the Pods can be daunting, but once you start using the program, you should have no trouble using them.

An interesting point to mention about the interface elements is that they are automatically hidden whenever the brush approaches. Initially, this threw me off, but after a few minutes, I began to question why other apps don't do the same thing. This feature is amazing, and I absolutely love it.

For the most part, ArtRage is a solid application. I did, however, experience times when the application would hesitate and lag. Although it never crashed, the lag was noticeable and frustrating. Luckily, it only seemed to happen when I was mucking with the canvas position and/or the zoom functions. I'm not sure if this was because I was using my drawing tablet, but, nonetheless, it was annoying and distracting.

My overall impression of ArtRage is positive. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking to create digital paintings. I'm still not convinced it's a Photoshop or Toon Boom replacement, but for $50 it's a nice addition to for any art tool collections.

ArtRage for iPad

If you're looking to create that digital masterpiece on the go, and more importantly, you're looking to do it on a budget… ArtRage for iPad is a good place to start.

If you look at the comparison chart, you'll notice there are some tools that are present in the desktop versions that are missing in the iPad version. The iPad version comes with most of the tools with the exception of the Effects Tools ('Gloop' Pen, Sticker Spray, Selection Tool, Transformation Tool, Text Tool) and the Utility Tools (Cloner, Gradient Fill, Pattern Fill). Honestly, it has so much to offer, that I didn't miss those tools at all.

And wow, did I love this interface.

All of the tools are accessible by tapping on the designated corner, and the color wheel is accessible by tapping on the opposite corner. An excellent feature is having the option to keep the toolset and color wheel present at all times. Alternatively, you may choose to minimize the panels, only showing the currently selected tool.

My only gripe with the iPad version is how the file management (Gallery) is handled. It feels cumbersome. It's also not intuitive. I found myself having to tap a few of the buttons in order to find the options I needed.

Overall, ArtRage for iPad is an absolutely a keeper! Whether you're on the go, or just sitting on your favorite couch… ArtRage for iPad is an excellent creative companion for both the novice and professional.

ArtRage for iPhone

Just like the iPad version, the iPhone version doesn't include all of the tools present in the desktop versions. Surprisingly, some of the tools present in the iPad version and missing in the iPhone version. It boils down to this… the iPhone version only comes with the Basic Artist Tools: Oil Brush, Pencil, Palette Knife, Paint Tube, Color Sampler, Crayon, and Eraser. But, considering the small screen size, the tools present do seem adequate.

While it's not as robust as it's iPad counterpart, the interface is clean and intuitive. Accessing the toolset and color wheel is identical in the iPhone version as it is on the iPad version. The only difference is that the iPhone version brings up a full screen for tool selection. There is also no option of keeping the entire set present while working. The reason for this is the obvious lack of screen real estate available on the iPhone.

Similar to the iPad variant, the iPhone has a clunky file management interface. In my opinion, this is their weakest area in the software.

ArtRage seems to be turning out top-notch iOS applications. The application is quick to respond and has yet to give even the slightest indication that it's remotely capable of crashing. Trust me when I say… Murphy was an optimist… if an app can crash, I can make it happen.

Overall Impression If you're looking for a full-fledged art program for your iPhone, you may want to keep looking. On the other hand, if what you're after is an easy to use tool for creating on the go art… this is the app for you!

• ArtRage for Mac or Windows - Download now
• ArtRage for iPad - Download now
• ArtRage for iPhone - Download now

Affinity Designer is now available on the Mac App Store. The team has spent the past four years working on the graphics design suite, but now the time has come for consumers and enthusiasts to purchase the software and get started on some breathtaking work. Affinity Designer is listed with a 20 percent discount at just $39.99 (£27.99 / €35.99) through next week only, so be sure grab your copy now.

The best part about Affinity Designer is there's no subscription fee. Once purchased, the software is yours to own. It's also promised that new features bundled in future updates will be delivered at no extra cost for the next couple of years. If you already have the beta installed, simply close it and make the purchase through the store – while a message will pop-up saying it's already installed, one can continue with the full installation (will overwrite the beta).

For those who share the Facebook post announcing the release, or follow the team and retweet the announcement tweet before October 5 will be entered into a draw to win a 15-inch MacBook Pro Retina.

Source: Affinity

Storyboard Pro is one of the outstanding animation apps made by Toon Boom Animation. They are the Industry standard with clients like Disney, Warner Bros, and Pixar. Now, I'm not a storyboard artist. I'm also not an animator. While I've always been interested in the art of animation, it's only recently that I started doing it. After some initial research, I decided to use Toon Boom Storyboard Pro and Harmony to create the cut scenes for my game, Crow's Quest.

Storyboard Pro: Interface

The Toon Boom family of products are powerful, straight forward, and easy to learn. At first glance, the Storyboard Pro interface may seem a little intimidating. However, after using it for only a short time, it turned out to be quite intuitive. The software comes with some preset workspaces, each targeting a different type of user. If none of these fit your style, the option exists to create a customized workspace. You can also add and remove toolbars, customize toolbars, create custom shortcut keys, and choose which windows are present (and their sizes)… it's all there.

Storyboard Pro: Drawing Tools

Storyboard Pro provides variety of tools including drawing tools for both vector and bitmap drawing. As one would expect, the drawing tools include the basics: Brush, Pencil, Text, Eraser, Paint, and the shape/line tools. What's important to note is that these tools behave differently depending on the type of layer on which they're used.

For example, the Brush properties in a vector layer contain options like Smoothing, Contour Smoothing, and Tip Shape. Whereas in the Bitmap layer, it has options for Flow (the amount of paint that's transferred onto the canvas), Spacing, and Texture. This is just one example of the differences. Almost all of the Drawing tools behave differently between the two types of layers, especially the Eraser.

Storyboard Pro: Storyboarding

Being able to create panels, digitally, takes storyboarding to a whole different level of awesome. I can't even imagine how painful traditional storyboarding must have been.

With Storyboard Pro, moving panels, adding panels, removing panels is effortless. What's nice is that when things are moved around, the numbering scheme gets updated automatically.

Within each panel exists the ability to create multiple drawing layers (vector, bitmap, or both) as well as the capability to add different annotations such as Dialog, Action Notes, and Voice Annotations. By the way, you even have the option of importing a script which can remain visible at all times, for all panels. Sweet!

Toon Boom organizes storyboard drawing in panels, scenes, sequences, and acts.

• Panel: Individual panel, or drawing
• Scene: A collection of one or more panels. A new scene is usually created when the background changes.
• Sequences: A collection of one or more scenes that are logically grouped together.
• Act: A further grouping of sequences. These are not enabled by default.

Storyboard Pro: Animatics

While Storyboard Pro isn't a full-fledged animation tool, it does have a timeline. This timeline helps to breathe life into your storyboards. With this software, it's possible to create a series of moving panels by adding music, sound effects, voice overs, transitions, camera angles, and more. You can even adjust the timing for all of your panels, individually.

Another great feature is its ability to export in a variety of different formats including PDF, image files, and several different movie formats.

The following animatic was done quickly using Storyboard Pro after playing around with the software for only a short amount of time. This is a partial sequence from Crow's Quest, and was exported directly from Storyboard Pro.

Storyboard Pro: The bottom line

If you're looking for an awesome storyboarding tool, packed with tons of features, Toon Boom Animation has your back! Easy enough to use for beginners… and powerful enough for even the most advanced Storyboard Artist.

Toon Boom also offers free tutorials on their site as well as a collection of resources.

• $399 - Download now

Adobe's switch to software as a service has sent budget-minded creative professionals looking for alternatives to the Creative Cloud apps that don't cost them a monthly fee. As the Mac App Store has grown in popularity, alternatives have cropped up. Pixelmator serves many users' needs for a Photoshop replacement. Sketch 3 is an excellent alternative to Illustrator. But where's a solid alternative to InDesign?

I've checked around; I've even polled some of you on Twitter to find out what you like. And my results have come up a bit short. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think that there really is a solid alternative.

Disrupting the disruptor

InDesign exists in an interesting place in the design ecosystem. It started life itself as a market disruptor — Adobe introduced InDesign as an alternative to QuarkXPress at a time when Quark ruled the desktop publishing market. Because of unwise management, hostile customer service, and other foibles, Quark was utterly loathed by many of the businesses and users that depended on its software.

Adobe didn't hit a home run with the first version of InDesign, but steadily improved it and integrated it so thoroughly with other Adobe products that it eventually became indispensable. Now InDesign is the market behemoth, and at least for some, Adobe has become the evil empire they're trying to get away from.

Having said that, InDesign is a darn nice piece of page layout software. It's powerful and it's ubiquitous. If you have InDesign and are familiar with how it works, it's reminiscent of the old marketing phrase, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."

Though the full Creative Cloud suite costs $49.99, it's worth pointing out that if all you need is InDesign, you can subscribe to just it for $19.99. And if you're a Creative Suite user, you can "upgrade" to Creative Cloud for $29.99 per month for your first year.

• $49.99 per month - Download now

QuarkXPress: Everything old is new again

Quark, for its part, soldiers on with QuarkXPress. With QuarkXPress 10.1, Quark continues to iterate Quark with very powerful features. Last year's version 10 release saw a thorough under-the-hood and feature-rich modernization, with 50 feature enhancements, a throughly optimized graphics engine, improved interface elements and much more.

More recently, the 10.1 release makes tweaks that even further, incorporating InDesign-style Dynamic Guides (like Smart Guides), 8000 percent zoom, layout export, a reimplemented and greatly improved Books feature, and HTML 5 animation support.

Unfortunately, all that power comes with a price, and a hefty one at that: $849, a lot more than budget-conscious creatives will be willing to pay, especially those that still have a negative connotation of Quark.

• $849 - Download now

iStudio Publisher

iStudio Publisher came out in 2009, coincidentally the same year Apple really brought Pages into its own as a powerful page layout tool. If you've exhausted what the older version of Pages can do for you — or if you're horrified by what happened to it in 2013 – give iStudio a try. There are a ton of templates you can download, too.

C.Four published it then handed back to the original creators. It'll be interesting to see what they do with iStudio Publisher — certainly one to keep your eye on.

$29.99 - Download now

Swift Publisher: Consumer-focused page layout tool

Some of you pointed out Swift Publisher as a possible alternative to InDesign. In fairness, developer Belight Software isn't trying to copy InDesign feature for feature, or even attempting to make a professional page layout app. But they have succeeded in creating a surprisingly powerful, lightweight page layout app with a lot of cool features at a very low price.

Looking over Swift Publisher, I don't liken it to an InDesign competitor as much as a more sophisticated version of an tool like Print Explosion or The Print Shop — and that's squarely its market: for consumers looking for a way to make really pretty layouts for their projects. You can use it to print flyers, newsletters, brochures, calendars and other content either freeforming them from scratch or using built-in templates and clip art.

• $19.99 - Download now

Pages: Apple's alternative

I can hear some of you out there groaning already. Pages took a big step backwards last year when Apple reworked the Mac versions of its iWork apps to work in lockstep with their iOS counterparts. And of all the apps, Pages took the biggest hit in terms of interface and functionality; changes I don't see it getting back any time soon.

Having said that, Pages' price for new Mac owners is certainly right — it's free with the purchase of a new computer, after all. What's more, it does have a powerful set of page layout features that make it powerful if you're patient enough to use it right.

But if you're a long-time Pages user, you're probably still suffering with some of the missing features and functionality from previous versions. Either that, or you're still using the older iWork '09-era version that Apple leaves behind when it upgrades.

• $19.99 - Download now

MultiAd Creator: Consumer or pro, it's your choice

It's been a few years since MultiAd has done anything significant to Creator, but it's still an alternative that some may want to consider. Creator combines page layout, drawing, illustration and image editing tools in one. It supports different export options, text on a path, automatic CMYK-RG conversions and full support of OpenType fonts.

Creator is available in two trim levels - Creator Express, a consumer-friendly version available for download in the Mac App Store, and Creator Professional, which is available for purchase directly from MultiAd. Professional adds a slew of important features like Pantone color library support, file conversion (including InDesign Interchange), trapping and more.

Creator Express:

• $29.99 - Download now

Creator Professional:

• $499 - Download now

Still looking

None of these options really fit the bill for what I was looking for — an inexpensive alternative to InDesign that's powerful enough for a creative professional to get by. It seems that we've come along way with image editing and illustration alternatives to Adobe products, but page layout still needs work.

Maybe I just have to accept that InDesign is the page layout king, and move on. Or maybe you're familiar with something that isn't listed here. If that's the case, I heartily welcome you to share your comments with me below.

We've seen it happen over and over again. A company exercises almost monopolistic control over an industry (BlackBerry and smartphones, Atari and video games, Microsoft and...well, everything) and then they lose their footing. More nimble competitors sweep in and eat their lunch. Nowhere is this lesson underscored more than in the desktop publishing market with QuarkXPress. So writes Dave Girard in Ars Technica:

In the late 90s, QuarkXPress was the dominant software in desktop publishing. Newspaper publishers, magazine publishers, graphic design firms - everyone used QuarkXPress. And QuarkXPress knew it. And abused their position of privilege by not giving a damn. They were slow with updates, slow to adopt new technology, arrogant and treated their customers like crap.

Adobe gave QuarkXPress users every reason to switch as soon as they could be convinced to do so. And initially Adobe had its work cut out for it - very expensive, very elaborate workflows had been developed using QuarkXPress. Many companies were in no hurry to change processes that worked. But eventually InDesign met their needs and Quark failed to keep their business, and the rest, as they say, is history.

QuarkXPress lives on, and some would say it's better for having been through that. But Quark itself is unlikely to ever regain the market dominance it had before Adobe cleaned its clock.

Classic literature teaches us that when a Roman emperor returned to the city to celebrate a victory on the battlefield, amidst the adulation of the crowds a slave would stand beside him, whispering "Memento mori" - "Remember that you will die."

It's a good lesson for any company in any dominant market position. No matter how safe you think you may be, smaller, more lithe and responsive competitors are always snapping at your heels. Adobe, I'm talking to you.

Simply put; this is insane. Artist Kyle Lambert has created this masterpiece that you'd be forgiven for thinking at first glance was a photograph but is actually a painting created using an iPad and the Procreate app. And a whole lot of time. About 200 hours to be precise.

Lambert has posted this time lapse video of the creation process as the image emerges, and it's absolutely unreal how realistic it is. Sure is a talented guy, but it also goes to show how awesome Procreate can be in the right hands. Grab that at the App Store from the link below, but do let me know what you think of this in the comments below.

• $5.99 - Download Now

Procreate by Savage Interactive is the best power-drawing and painting tool I've used on the iPad and it's just hit version 2. Included in the update is 64-bit support for iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and Retina iPad mini, as well as an all new, all iOS 7 icon and design. There's also an improved gallery, and even better - new GPU-acclerated filters like Gaussian Blur, Sharpen, Noise, Hue, saturation & brightness, Color Balance (Highlights, Midtones, Shadows), and Curves (Gamma, Red, Green, Blue).

Grab your finger, or a stylus, and get ready to get your art on. If you already own Procreate, the update is free, and if you don't, it's the best money you'll spend on supplies all year.

• $5.99 - Download now

Repix is an art photography app for iPhone and iPad by Sumoing that offers a unique experience of mixing painting with photo editing. Instead of simply adding filters, Repix includes a bunch effects that you can paint and mix and match onto specific areas of your photos.

Repix comes loaded with a sample photo of flowers that you can play with to learn how to use the app. You can also load any photo from your Camera Roll, Photo Stream, or Facebook. Unfortunately, you cannot access photos stored in other albums on your iPad.

Along the bottom of the screen, you will find all the brushes available in Repix. To use them, simply make a selection and paint with your finger. The brush size is static, but zooming in and out of the photo will adjust its relative size to the photograph, allowing you to make fine adjustments or more broad edits.

At the top of the screen is an icon that gives you access to more traditional editing: crop, brightness, contrast, saturation, vibrance, temperature, and vignetting. To apply the edits, you simply swipe your finger left or right across the screen to adjust its intensity.

Repix comes stocked with many brushes for free. Additional brush packs are available as in-app purchases for $1.99 each, or $4.99 for the Master's Collection.

The good

• Unique, handcrafted brushes to remix your photos
• Edit any part of your photos by simply painting with your finger
• Pinch to zoom adjusts brush size
• Erase, undo or start again
• Ability to crop and adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, vibrance, temperature, and vignetting
• Support for both landscape and portrait
• Access Facebook photos
• Share to Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram
• Buy more brushes for $1.99 per pack or $4.99 for all of them

The bad

• Can't access all albums, only Camera Roll and Photo Stream
• Can't compare with original
• Crop tool doesn't include common ratios

The bottom line

Repix is an awesome app for lovers of art and photography. It's extremely easy and intuitive to use. I'm no artist by any means and cannot really give Repix justice, but for those of you who are, I'm sure you can create some beautiful artwork with it.

If you do, please share your work in our Photography Forum; we'd love to see it!

• Free - Download now

Before he made the Simpsons' a household name and cultural icon, Matt Groening helped Apple convince regular people that the machines that once filled rooms, punched cards, and ran industries belonged in their lives and in their homes. Linus Edwards of VintageZen writes:

Terrific stuff. Grab a frosty beverage, sit back, and go through all of it.

Source: VintageZen via Daring Fireball

There is an abundance of apps in the App Store devoted to making collages of your photos, and Fuzel has always been one of my favorites. It was recently updated to version 2.0, making this great collage-making app even better.

One of the big new features of Fuzel is the ability to create 5.25"x5.25" postcards and send them to friends and family. Shipping within the US is $1.99 and Internationally costs $3.99. This postcard feature is thanks to Fuzel's new partnership with MyPublisher Inc.

Fuzel has also added a new full-featured photo editor so that you can do all your editing directly in the app instead of switching to another app to do your editing. The adjustments you can make include lighting, color, sharpness, blur, and vignette. The editing tool is really simple to use and simply requires you to slide your finger left/right or up/down to apply the intensity of the adjustment (similar to iPhoto).

In addition to making basic edits to your photos, Fuzel also includes 19 different filters with the option to purchase 12 more as an in-app purchase for $0.99.

One of the great features of Fuzel is the ability to add frames, patterns, and labels to your collages and with 2.0, now there's even more to choose from. Fuzel comes with 6 labels and 24 patterns with the option to buy 12 more labels as an in-app purchase for $0.99.

The good

• Excellent interface
• Beautiful design
• Edit individual photos
• Add filters to photos
• Choose a pre-designed template or edit your own cuts to make your collage truly unique
• Choose between several different popular crop ratios (not just square!)
• Send real postcards to friends and family
• Add frames, patterns, and labels

The bad

• Postcards restricted to square
• Icons for choosing between taking a photo with the built-in camera or choosing one from the Camera Roll are nontraditional and may seem confusing to some
• "Open in Instagram doesn't work correctly (this could be an Instagram problem, not Fuzel)"
• Not available for iPad (it would be awesome on iPad!)

The conclusion

With Fuzel's update, it continues to be my go-to collage making app. It has an impressive design and includes a lot of features without feeling cluttered or complicated. Fuzel is an excellent app for creating collages.

Fuzel has a free version and "Pro" version. Purchasing the "Essential Pack" in the free version will make it equivalent to Fuzel Pro. So if you want to give Fuzel a spin before committing to the whopping $0.99 it costs to purchase the Pro version, give the free version a go and let us know what you think!

• Free - Download now
• $0.99 - Download now

Procreate, one of the best art apps for the iPad, has been updated to version 1.7, which adds a ton of new features, including support for 4K Cinema canvas sizes, a new, full screen mode, and a bunch of new blend modes including: color, saturation, hue, luminosity, overlay, hard light, soft light, linear burn, color dodge, color burn, difference, and subtract.

However, developers Savage Interactive didn't stop there, they've also redesigned the way layers work:

Added a fantastic new transform system:

There's a lot more too, including support for the Pogo Connect stylus, multiple swatch panels, a new eyedropper tool, and still more.

Procreate also still gives all the good, old fashioned, granular controls for things like brush size, opacity, and digital color mixing that many pixel artists grew up on, and in a way that just feels right for a multitouch device like the iPad.

If you're into painting, sketching, drawing, or otherwise art-ing it up, check out Procreate 1.7.

And if you want to hear more about the app, check out our interview with Savage Interactive designer James Cuda from way back in Iterate 2.

• $4.99 - Download now

Sure, birthdays are year-round, the holidays are the busy season when it comes to cards. Why waste time getting some old-fashioned, cookie-cutter card from the corner store when you can make and send your own, personalized, perfect greeting card with an app from the App Store. Cards by Apple, Ink Cards by Sincerely Ink, and Go Cards by Hallmark all allow you to create and send greeting cards straight from your iPhone. But which one is best for the holidays, and best for you?

Cards vs. Ink Cards vs. Go Cards: User interface & design

Cards only uses landscape orientation and allows you to swipe through cards in gallery form. If you've ever used the Cover Flow feature in your Music app, it's very similar. The default section aggregates all the cards from the entire app. Directly below the gallery you have a menu that allows you to choose between different categories. Based on the season and upcoming holidays, these may change. For example, Mother's Day is currently listed but will probably be swapped out for Father's Day when appropriate.

Since the winter holiday season is right around the corner, the first tab you'll find are cards for Christmas, Hanukkah, and other winter celebrations. Tapping on that section allows you to start browsing through the selection that Cards has to offer. While the Cover Flow like view is visually enjoyable, it isn't very practical for scrolling through cards quickly. This is one issue I have with the overall layout of Cards. When you're inside sections that have quite a few options, it becomes annoying rather quickly.

Once you've found the card you'd like to edit, tapping into it will give you an overview and allow you to customize. There isn't too much more to the process than skimming through cards and customizing them. After you've tweaked the card to your exact liking you can simply tab the Buy button in the upper right hand corner to purchase the card and enter shipping information.

Ink Cards lays out cards across a white bookshelf which allows you to easily thumb through them quickly. I much prefer this over the way Cards forces you to use a landscape orientation and browse through one at a time. From the main menu you can utilize the top most menu to access feature cards, cards by categories, and saved cards that you've already started customizing.

Once you've opened a category you'll see the shelf of cards showing you what Ink Cards has available for that occasion. Once you find a card that looks interesting to you, you can tap on it to preview it. Since most of Ink Cards' selection is one sided, there isn't a ridiculous amount to customize. Any images that you can customize will show up as a plus sign where you can tap to drop in photos.

After you've finished updating and editing a card you can save it for later or purchase it. The purchase will simply come off your already purchased credits on your account so there is not individual charge per card. The only other part of Ink Cards that you have to explore is the settings panel. This is where you can access your address book, birthday reminders, buy credits, and edit push notification settings.

Go Cards by Hallmark works in a similar way to Cards when it comes to user interface. The main screen is a little different but you'll basically start off by selecting your occasion. After you've selected that you'll be presented with a gallery view of all the cards Go Cards has available for that particular occasion. In order to view more cards you can swipe left and right across the screen. If you find one you like you can tap it in order to view the inside and back.

Along the bottom you've got a menu outside of the main screen menu that gives you quick access to creating cards, viewing cards you have saved in Go Cards already, and your profile. If you've saved cards from a previous session you can easily pull them up via the saved tab. Tapping on them allows you to go back to editing or purchasing them.

Out of all three choices, Ink Cards has the best user interface. It's not only easy to navigate but doesn't force you to thumb through cards one at a time. It's also the only app that allows you to easily send the same card to more than one recipient without having to retrieve saved cards over and over again.

Cards vs. Ink Cards vs. Go Cards: Creating & customizing cards

After launching Cards you'll instantly see a ton of them. Once you've chosen your category from the bottom menu and found the card you like, just tap it in order to start editing and customizing it. The first thing you'll most likely want to do is add your own photos to the empty frames. Tap on any frame for a picture in order to add or change what's already there. You'll be taken to your Photos app in order to pick them out. You can browse through your camera roll, Photo Stream, or any other album on your iPhone. Find the one you want and tap on it and it'll automatically be inserted. Once you've inserted a photo you can move it around and pinch or pull to center and size it the way you'd like.

After you've chosen photos and have edited any front text you can open up the card and insert photos and text where appropriate. The last step is to put information on the envelope for sender and receiver. After filling out all the fields you can use the three tabs along the top for outside, inside, and envelope in order to check your card for errors and make sure it's just the way you like.

The last step is to click the Buy button in the upper right hand corner in order to buy the card as an in-app purchase. If you aren't ready to buy yet, you can save the card for access later. After launching the app again you'll see a Saved Cards button in the upper left hand corner. Tapping on it will retrieve all your saved cards.

Ink Cards allows you to choose from a variety of different kinds of cards and categories. The bookshelf layout makes it a lot easier to quickly browse through cards instead of tabbing through them one by one, which is what Cards and Go Cards both require. After you've found your card you can tap on it and start editing.

Not only does Ink Cards allow you to add photos and change text but in most cases, you can even change the theme colors and add filters to photos such as black and white or sepia. While you could always use another photo editing app to edit the photo you'd like to use before hand, it's nice that Ink Cards gives you the option to do so inside the app.

As you're creating and editing your card inside Ink Cards you can tap the Fullscreen button in the upper right hand corner in order to view a larger preview of what your card will look like.

After adding photos where applicable you can go ahead and start filling in text blocks. Ink Cards will show you all the pages that have text with add boxes underneath the card preview. Tapping on them allows you to instantly change or add text. Once you're done you can click continue one more time in order to choose a recipient.

Go Cards begins the process by allowing you to choose a card template just like the others. Once you've decided which one you want you can tap into it and begin instantly editing. One thing I've notice about Go Cards is that the cards are actual opening cards where Cards and Ink Cards tend to be just front and back templates. If you're looking for standard greeting cards instead of just 2-sided inserts, Go Cards is probably going to be your best bet.

After adding any images you'd like to add you can edit text. Go Cards allows you to edit mostly all the text within any card to fit whatever you'd like to say. After you're done you can also personally sign your name. This is a nice touch and something that both Cards and Ink Cards don't currently offer. If you don't want to sign your name and prefer a text signature, you can, of course, use that as well.

Once you're done editing your card you'll have the option to purchase it and choose the recipient you'd like to send it to. A virtual envelope will pop up asking you to fill out the send and receive information. After you're done you can simply tap the Buy button in the lower right hand corner in order to purchase it.

When it comes to creating and editing cards, Hallmark's Go Cards gives you the most options edit wise. The written signature is also a nice touch that neither Cards or Ink Cards offers.

Cards vs. Ink Cards vs. Go Cards: Card selection

When it comes to card selection, neither Cards nor Go Cards have a wide array. This will be important to a lot of people considering you don't want to be sending and receiving the same cards with your friends each and every year. I remember going through Cards' selection last holiday season and the selection they have this year isn't too different.

Ink Cards has a pretty robust selection that they seem to be adding to rather regularly. If selection is important to you, and it should be, Ink Cards will offer you the most options template wise.

Cards vs. Ink Cards vs. Go Cards: Print quality

Obviously when ordering greeting cards online, you'd naturally be concerned with the print quality the other party will see when they receive your card.

I have personally ordered many items from Apple in the past including photo albums and greeting cards. The print quality is better than most other services I've used for greeting cards. It may seem a little pricey but the card stock and ink used are higher quality than the cheaper services you find online.

Our samples from Ink Cards and Go Cards have not come in yet so we have no way to personally gauge but we did, of course, dig through reviews of both apps both within the App Store and elsewhere on the web. Ink Cards seemed to received good reviews when it came to print quality and the actual output.

We couldn't find too much on Hallmark Go Cards in terms of print quality but we'll update as soon as we get our sample cards in the mail. If any of you have used the service previously, please let us know about your experiences in the comments.

Undecided.

Cards vs. Ink Cards vs. Go Cards: Pricing

When it comes to price, all three services will charge you a different price per card. The way they charge also differs slightly. Cards, Ink Cards, and Go Cards are all free downloads from the App Store but that's about their only similarity when it comes to pricing.

Cards will charge you a $2.99 in-app purchase fee for each card you buy. If you only buy one card, that's all you're charged.

Ink Cards works a little differently and operates off of credits. The most expensive card is $1.98 if you're only buying 50 credits at a time. That's the lowest package Ink Cards offers which means you have to spend almost $10 up front. If you're only planning on sending one card, it isn't the best option. If you need to send multiple cards though, Ink Cards' pricing is a lot more reasonable than both Cards and Go Cards.

Go Cards' pricing is flat rate just like Cards. For each card you buy through the app you'll be charged $3.49. After you've finished creating the card you'll be asked to create a Hallmark account and to enter your credit card information.

Ink Cards is the best deal cost wise but you have to keep in mind that with both Cards and Ink Cards you are getting a 2-sided insert as opposed to a full card, which is what Hallmark Go Cards offers. It'll really come down to whether a full card or an insert is what you want and whether or not you're willing to pay the extra money for full size cards.

Cards vs. Ink Cards vs. Go Cards: The bottom line

Cards, Ink Cards, and Go Cards are all acceptable solutions for sending cards on the go. When it comes to actually creating the cards, there aren't too many differences between them. That leaves price and selection.

Ink Cards is the best when it comes to selection, and if you're ordering many cards. It has the most templates and is the cheapest option.

Hallmark Go is the best option if you're ordering single cards at a time. For 49 cents more you are getting a full size card instead of the standard 2-sided insert you'll get from Cards and Ink Cards. You also have the ability to customize your signature and more of the actual content than what the others allow.

Discovering Colors - Animals is a coloring book for the iPhone and iPad that aims to teach young children (ages 2-5) about matching colors in drawings of animals. In each drawing, different sections are marked by a colored circle indicating which color should be used there. To color the picture, the child simply needs to tap the section with the correct color. When the drawing is completely colored, it will animate.

Although Discovering Colors - Animals can be easily be used by a child without the help of an adult, the folks at Frogames recommend that you sit down with your child and play with them. There are many different ways you can interact with your child, including talking about the animals featured in each drawing and identifying the name of the colors.

The free version of Discovering Colors - Animals comes with 4 different drawings and the paid version comes with 16 drawings (4 of which must be unlocked). The paid version of Discovering Colors - Animals is on sale for $0.99 for a few days.

The good

• Fun music
• Cute drawings
• Children can play alone, yet there's plenty of opportunity for parents to offer more play through interaction
• Change difficulty settings
• Drawing animates when completely colored, bringing the animals to life

The bad

• Would love to see more than 12 drawings included

The bottom line

Discovering Colors - Animals for iPhone and iPad is a great app for young children even as young as two years old. Some may complain that this coloring book doesn't actually say the names of the colors, but I actually prefer it this way. If an app does all the teaching, my daughter usually has no interest in interacting with me while playing, but Discovering Colors - Animals allows me to offer more to the experience by playing with her. This is a huge plus in my book.

A new York Arist by the name of Henry Hargreaves has recently unveiled a new installation appropriately dubbed Deep Fried Gadgets, featuring an iPhone and iPad coated in greasy goodness. Unlike some people, artists don't have much of a budget for destroying gadgets, so the ones in this exhibit are just scale models, but it could have easily fooled me. Other subjects include a Macbook, iPod, Game Boy, and an external hard drive. Even if they aren't real gadgets, what could possibly compel someone to toss gadgets to the deep fryer? Hargreaves explains:

This is reflected in some of his other work, including celebrity portraits made of toast and fancy typography made from bacon. While Deep Fried Gadgets isn't as controversial in the art world as, say, a taxidermied cat turned into a helicopter, it's good to see artists getting creative with their iPhones and and iPads, and not just by using apps on the devices to do their work. Just a few days ago, a promising new project aimed to create composite images by having a bunch of iPad owners coordinate with one another and pose under a camera.

So, who's hungry?

Source: Sydney Morning Herald via MacWorld, Henry Hargreaves

There's a plethora of photo collage apps in the App Store, but Fuzel is one of the best one's I've ever come across. One of its defining features is that you can design your own layouts by placing the separators precisely where you want. It also has a gorgeous design.

The home screen of Fuzel looks like a photo album with the square cut out to preview one of the photos inside. Tapping on the album (or swiping it) will open the album to the first page -- your latest collage. From each page, you can quickly edit, share, delete, or access a thumbnail view to browse all your collages. Swiping left or right will navigate to your other projects.

When creating a new collage, you can design the layout exactly how you want from the Cut screen. Placing your finger on the screen will bring up a straight line that you can move around and angle exactly how you want. Using two fingers will give you more precision. Once you've added all the lines you want, you can further customize their placement by moving the intersection points which allows you to be creative with the shapes of the cutouts.

Once you're done with your cuts, each space becomes a place to put a photo, which you can grab directly from your camera, or select from Facebook or your albums and Camera Roll. The width of your outlines can be adjusted and you can choose from 27 colors for your base.

Each photo that you add to your collage can be given one of 18 filters, allowing you to be creative with out you mix and match the filters between your photos. There are also 17 photo frames and captions that you can place around your collage.

If you're in the mood to just quickly create a collage without spending time designing a layout, there are also 36 preset layouts available in square, 2:3 and 4:3 ratios. These layout are also adjustable so that you can tweak them to your liking.

Once you're done with your collage, you can share to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, email, or save to your Camera Roll. Save as high-res is an option.

Like I said, Fuzel has got to be the best collage apps I've come across, yet. However, it does have some limitations. For example, the 2:3 layouts are in portrait and the 4:3 are in landscape, and you can't rotate them to change orientation. The other annoying feature is that when you add a photo that's stored on your iPhone, you can't sort by albums -- they're just all grouped together as a single album which is rather annoying for someone with a couple thousand photos stored on her iPhone.

Those are the only two things that really bother my, though, and still find Fuzel to be an excellent app. The possibilities are endless with Fuzel, and that's a very important trait for an art-creation app to have.

If you pick this one up, share your collages with us in the iMore Photography Forum!

$1.99 - Download Now

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