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  • Wacom Sty­lus

    Sketch­ing on an iPad 2 with the Wacom Bam­boo Sty­lus: We had a great expe­ri­ence with the Bam­boo Sty­lus and the Sketch­book Pro app. Gen­tle, short motions are eas­ier to exe­cute, and using a sty­lus doesn’t inter­fere with the vis­i­bil­ity of the screen.

  • DAGi Sty­lus

    Unlike many other styli like the DAGi’s Sty­lus has one advan­tage over them. It allows the user to be able to see what they are writing/drawing on the screen.

  • Art Rage

    It’s hard not to be impressed with ArtRage for the iPad. Check it out for your desktop.

  • Match Book

    Any­one seri­ous about poster design is going to love this book. In essence it is a recipe book for mak­ing posters. We strongly encour­age all artist to check it out

  • Vault of Awesome

    • [+]Demos
    • [+]Extras
    • [—]Reviews
    • [+]Tutorials

  • Unlock the Vault

    • Some Great Textures: I'm always looking for ways to combine existing textures to make new and interesting resources for you guys. This time around I took a bunch of paper textures, some of them stained, and combined t...

    • Art Rage Review

    Posted on: December 28th, 2010 by

    Shogun Curtis

    With ArtRage you can export from your iPad to the desk­top version

    For me, review­ing a paint­ing App on the iPad would be sim­i­lar to hav­ing Charles Barkley as a judge on Danc­ing with the Stars. It’s slightly out of my com­fort zone.  With that being said, it’s hard not to be impressed with ArtRage for the iPad.  A beau­ti­ful app that really shows off the flex­i­bil­ity of the iPad and reminds us of the power of a touch screen dis­play. For $6.99,  ArtRage deliv­ers a nearly true-to-life artis­tic expe­ri­ence, minus the cost of sup­plies and the mess that would likely ensue if you unleashed a non-artist like me on a can­vas and fin­ger paints.


    Pros

    • Inex­pen­sive. Costs only US$25 for down­load or $50 for a boxed version.
    • User-friendly and very easy to learn. Great way to exper­i­ment with dig­i­tal art.
    • Allows you to load an image as your can­vas or as “trac­ing paper” for paint­ing over.
    • Lay­ers sup­port, Pho­to­shop PSD import and export.
    • Ver­sion 2.5 adds new tools and layer improvements.

    Cons

    • Some­times brush strokes lag behind the cursor.
    • No multi-monitor support.
    • Lacks some tools you’d expect. Some I’d like to see are water­color, sponges, and masks.

    Descrip­tion

    • Paint and draw with oils, pen­cil, air­brush, mark­ers, chalk, crayon, palette knife, glit­ter, roller, tube, eraser, & stencils.
    • Tools func­tion like their real-world coun­ter­parts and can be adjusted for var­i­ous effects (wet­ness, soft­ness, angle, etc.).
    • Styl­ish, un-intimidating, easy-to-learn user inter­face. Includes thor­ough User Man­ual (PDF).
    • Load a trac­ing image and paint over it with or with­out auto color selec­tion. “Pin” a ref­er­ence photo to your workspace.
    • Import an image as your can­vas, then paint or color on it–or smear col­ors with the palette knife.
    • Use pre­set can­vas tex­tures or adjust grain, color, rough­ness, scale, opac­ity, and metal effects to cre­ate your own.
    • Metal­lic paint option makes any color into a metal­lic. Work with metal­lic oils, glit­ter, and shiny back­ground textures.
    • Tool palettes are easy to use. Palettes hide them­selves auto­mat­i­cally when you paint near them.
    • Work with lay­ers, includ­ing 23 layer blend modes. Import & export lay­ered PSD files for Pho­to­shop compatibility.
    • New: Layer improve­ments, smooth blender, pre­cise pen­cil, sten­cils for draw­ing shapes, lines, and curves.

    Guide Review — ArtRage 2.5 Paint­ing Soft­ware for Win­dows and Mac

    ArtRage is an inex­pen­sive, easy-to-learn art pro­gram for Win­dows and Mac that is tons of fun to play with. As the devel­op­ers say, you can play with paint with­out any of the mess or the expen­sive sup­plies. If you’re not sure whether dig­i­tal art is for you, ArtRage Free Ver­sion is a nice, no-cost way to find out. Chances are, you’ll be hooked, and the $25 upgrade price for the full ver­sion opens up more tools and features.

    ArtRage 2 intro­duced four new tools: air­brush, glit­ter, paint tube, and paint roller. The full ver­sion offers full lay­ers sup­port includ­ing all 23 of Photoshop’s stan­dard layer blend modes. In ArtRage 2.5, the layer fea­tures were expanded to include layer groups and bet­ter Pho­to­shop com­pat­i­bil­ity. Also a sten­cils and rulers fea­ture was added for draw­ing pre­cise shapes and lines. The pro­gram includes sev­eral fun and prac­ti­cal sten­cils, and users can also cre­ate their own. Ambi­ent Design’s Web site offers sev­eral tuto­ri­als and a user forum to help you learn the pro­gram and inter­act with other users.

    ArtRage is per­fect if you have a child who’s inter­ested in explor­ing com­puter art; even very young chil­dren should have no prob­lem pick­ing it up. As soon as I tried the glit­ter tool it brought me back to kinder­garten and mak­ing art with glue and metal­lic glit­ter. With ArtRage, there’s no glue mess and you won’t have to worry about your kid eat­ing the foil glitter.

    ArtRage is equally fun for adults–and edu­ca­tional, too. If you own a graph­ics tablet or tablet PC, you absolutely need to have this pro­gram. Go ahead and spring for the full version–it’s totally worth it!

    ArtRage can be pur­chased from the devel­oper as a down­load or in a boxed ver­sion from Smith Micro (com­pare prices below).

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