Astropad Studio promises to turn iPad Pro with Apple Pencil into high-end graphics tablet
Astropad on Wednesday launched Astropad Studio, a new edition of its second-screen app for the iPad, geared towards making an iPad Pro suitable as a professional drawing tablet.
Studio is said to offer low latency and full support for the Apple Pencil, including pressure sensitivity. To further cater to illustrators, the app incorporates customizable gesture shortcuts for actions like undo, erase, or clicking the right mouse button. Some actions can be combined with Pencil input, and shortcuts will adapt to individual Mac apps.
The app also supports iPad keyboards, and can connect to a Mac via Wi-Fi or USB, though the latter is probably necessary for people worried about minimizing latency. A specific portion of a Mac's screen can be defined as the working area on an iPad.
Unlike most iOS apps, Studio is available only a subscription basis after a seven-day trial. It costs $7.99 per month, or $64.99 per year. As a perk however, Astropad is promising monthly software updates, settings sync across devices, and "priority creative pro support."
Two features listed as "coming soon" are adjustable pressure curves and stroke stabilization.
Connected Macs must be running OS X 10.10 or better, while Studio itself requires iOS 9. Technically the app will run on most iPads, but it's intentionally optimized for the Pro and Pencil.
Studio is said to offer low latency and full support for the Apple Pencil, including pressure sensitivity. To further cater to illustrators, the app incorporates customizable gesture shortcuts for actions like undo, erase, or clicking the right mouse button. Some actions can be combined with Pencil input, and shortcuts will adapt to individual Mac apps.
The app also supports iPad keyboards, and can connect to a Mac via Wi-Fi or USB, though the latter is probably necessary for people worried about minimizing latency. A specific portion of a Mac's screen can be defined as the working area on an iPad.
Unlike most iOS apps, Studio is available only a subscription basis after a seven-day trial. It costs $7.99 per month, or $64.99 per year. As a perk however, Astropad is promising monthly software updates, settings sync across devices, and "priority creative pro support."
Two features listed as "coming soon" are adjustable pressure curves and stroke stabilization.
Connected Macs must be running OS X 10.10 or better, while Studio itself requires iOS 9. Technically the app will run on most iPads, but it's intentionally optimized for the Pro and Pencil.
Comments
The iPad is the tablet most used in business, government and the graphics arts. It does far more than you believe. You just haven't looked. Probably you do t have one, or aren't bothering to see what's available.
i use CAD, graphics, photo AMD video editing on my iPad Pro. I did it before the Pro, but the Pencil is a major improvement. It's better than the Surface Pro stylus, and close to the Wacom stylus. In some ways, it's better.
the iPad is a pretty powerful device, with an excellent screen that will become better later this year when Apple will implement DCI-P3 across the range.
most of the iPad sales that are fizzing away are the Mini sales, which were responsible for the dramatic increaein sales for years. The phablets are r4sponsible for that. But full sized iPads seem to doing ok.
i already pay $55 a month for CC, but my daughter can have it on her machines as well. CC is a good buy if you actually take advantage of it. If you don't, then it's way too much. But you can get PS and Lightroom for $10 a month, which is plenty reasonable. But these are real pro apps. And you also get many more apps with that. You also get the increasingly excellent iOS app library. So I really can't complain about that.
but then, there's $99 a year for AutoCAD 360 that I use on iOS, and the sub for Office, and, and ,and...
it all just just gets to be too much after a while.b
When Adobe first came out with PS for iOS and Android, it was pretty lame. But that was to be expected, as it was something new for them, and tablets were not nearly as good as they are today. They also came out, shortly after, with a number of other apps. Anyone could use these apps for free. I couldn't understand their business model with these. But as it turned out, it should have been obvious. As they've greatly improved PS for iOS (not sure what they're doing with these apps on Android these days), and their other apps, which mostly all get 4 star reviews, they felt they were offering enough features to subsume them into CC. Then they added a decent version of Lightroom.
now, I can see that as iPads get more powerful over time, and add the dci-p3 screen, with the excellent Pencil, much better than Microsoft's version, these apps, as part of CC, will continue to get better. After all, Adobe really doesn't care if you use PS on your Mac or Windows machine, or on your iOS tablet. It's all the same to them.
once curves came out, I could justify using my iPad Pro for more of this. I can't wait until March or April for the new 12.9" Pro with the new screen and the A10x chip. That will make a big difference.
as far as the Surface Studio goes, it's nice, but lacks a number of things I consider necessary. First of all, Windows 10 is the first Windows version that have a real built in color management solution. But it's pretty buggy, and comes turned off. All of Apple's devices now have working color management, and the Mac, of course has had it for ages, as Apple first developed this. ICC profiles were ColorSync profiles before Apple handed that in as a standard. All color management software works according to Apple specifications laid down decades ago by Apple.
on Windows, PS and other software must use their own built-in color management, which is very clumsy. The reason is that as sRGB is the standard, anything that's sRGB, or has no profile, and is therefor assumed to be sRGB, will display properly on Windows, or Android. But if it's not, then there's a major problem. Not so on the Mac, or iOS, where color management is system wide, and automatically supported. Even other browsers need only to recognize it. Again, not on Windows. So if you do something in PS, and assign it a profile, or convert to a profile, even if you have a wideband, calibrated monitor (that's another peeve on Windows, calibrating a monitor correctly!) it won't be displayed correctly if it isn't sRGB. And heaven help you if you are trying to look at two versions of the same graphic, or image, having different profiles!
so while I know people who are Windows people inside and out, struggle with these color issues in Windows, I'm not about to go through that.
but, back on topic. Microsoft began this years ago, and then Adobe followed suit (ooh, a pun). They make a steady income stream from it, so it's good for them. All subscriptions are good that way, unless you lose money on them, as streaming music companies do.
the problem is that this is creeping everywhere. It's partly the fault of Apple, who began the idea of free updates forever. That seems great for us, and when apps were simpler nine years ago, I guess it worked well. But developers don't see it that way anymore if they've got sophisticated software. The costs to maintain it is just too high.
so I suppose we'll see more of this. The problem I have with this app, and I have the standard one, is that it's a utility app, and not much more, as far as I can see. With office going for $99 a year, and $79 for home use, I can't see this as being valued at $65 a year.
As much as I hate subscription plans, I have been sucked into the vortex. I now have subscriptions to Apple Music, Netflix, Office 365, iCloud & iTunes Match.
No matter how much I scream at the idea of subscriptions, it looks like it is inevitable for some things.
This though, I can't see myself spending $65 a year for. Then again, I am not a professional artist so I am not the target audience.