The iPad’s purpose as a writing device is well recognized. There are countless note taking applications, from the inbuilt Notes application right up to Apple’s Pages. However, as a drawing device, the iPad is not as well known, and Apple hasn’t created a drawing application – let alone have one installed by default. AutoDesk took matters into their own hands with SketchBook Pro for iPad.

SketchBook Pro is an intuitive, fully-featured drawing application, suited for both a quick sketch and a more detailed drawing. The interface is impressively clean for the amount of features that it holds, with full precedence being given to your designs at hand rather than the myriad of customizable options that exist. A small circle close to the edge of the device (changing depending on which way you hold your iPad) provides access to an options bar up at the top or side of your screen, as well a number of quick options: erase layer, undo, redo and enter full screen drawing mode again. This menu bar is also accessible by a three finger swipe down.

The menu bar hosts a number of buttons, including both basic and advanced drawing features. The gallery button provides access to your in-built gallery, where you can see all of your saved drawings, as well as e-mail and export them (more on this later). The usual plus and info icons are present too, adding the ability to create a new document and get information on and help using SketchBook. The Brush Editor tool is probably where most users will spend their time aside from drawing. There are over 75 preset brushes, including pens and markers, pencils and objects. Radius and opacity of each brush is customizable, as is colour in a number of different formats – from block colours, RGB colour codes and almost everything in between. The design is simple for the features that it holds – it is clear that thought has been put into where tools should go.

Basic, essential features like which type of shape to draw and a mirrored drawing tool exist, as well as more advanced characteristics like layers, enabling users to have full control of their work, focusing on certain areas as well as the bigger picture. A 2500% zoom capability compliments the layers feature nicely.

In terms of ease of use, a quick understanding of the menu options goes a long way. Once you’ve covered ground to become familiar with the basics of SketchBook, it becomes very quick to just open up and start drawing. An included help guide sees you on your way nicely. Drawing itself is limited only by the powers of your finger! My art teacher always criticized me for the overuse of a ruler, but you quickly feel at home drawing freehand on SketchBook.

The image export options are rich, with the ability to export to photo library as a flattened (single layer) image to iTunes; PSD to iTunes; flattened e-mail and PSD e-mail. Photos can be imported from your Photo Library, and all creations can be duplicated to ensure a fatal error won’t cause a major setback.

I’m impressed with SketchBook. It will stay on my iPad as the drawing tool of choice. It works seamlessly and operates entirely through you, meaning you can do what you want where you want, without limitation. Highly recommended.

[ SketchBook Pro Review is a post from 148Apps ]

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[ iDesk for iPad Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Trick Your Ride ($0.99)

Version – 1.0

Review – “Create the car of your dreams with this unique app!”

If you’re a car enthusiast Trick Your Ride may be right up your alley! Trick Your Ride is a photo editing app that offers you tools to change the appearance of everything from the window tint to the tire rims and accessories! You choose one of the stock photos, or take your own photo and create your dream car!

When you open this app for the first time you’ll be greeted by some background music. This is one of five different custom tracks that you can set and listen to as you create your dream machine! If one of these is not to your liking you can also use a song from your iPod music library or choose not to play a song as well. This is done from the “Music” menu on the editing screen. Unfortunately it seems that there is no way to edit the background music directly from the main menu of the app.

The main menu screen has 4 buttons. In the upper right corner of the screen is a help button. This takes you to a scrolling window that is full of information on how all of the options within the app work. It is pretty long, but it is also very descriptive and makes it easy to figure out how some of the more complicated features work.

The other three buttons allow you to take a photo with your iPhone’s camera, use a picture from your library, or use a template that is built into the app and get started! Once you select your photo you’ll see a menu bar above your photo. This bar is full of all kinds of things that you can use to “Trick Your Ride.”

The first button in the menu takes you back to the main menu. The next button will open up the aforementioned music settings screen allowing you to select the right music to fit your mood! Right next to that button is the “Background” button. This button will bring up a screen with a few template backgrounds and the option to select a background directly from your photo library! It took me a second to figure out how this one works because it doesn’t show up right away. To make the background show up you actually have to erase whatever is in the foreground in front of it. This is explained in the help feature that I mentioned earlier.

The next two buttons allow you to zoom in on the areas that you’re working on and erase things that you don’t want any longer. The zoom feature uses the iOS “pinch” zoom gesture, and the eraser has a slider that allows you to set it to a variable size. The largest size is about the size of the tip of a finger, and the smallest size is so small that I couldn’t really even see it without looking very closely.

The next four buttons are where the core of the optimization features lie. You’ll find everything from wheels that you can overlay on top of the ones in your photo, down to all kinds of accessories and the ability to overlay text on top of your image! If you need to touch up your photos with a different color can do that with a pen that has variable size, opacity and color. Once you have your photo all finished it’s time to save your work. Touching the button in the upper right corner of the screen will allow you to quickly save it to either your image gallery or directly to FaceBook!

If you enjoy fun photo apps with clip art this one definitely has a unique feel to it. If you also enjoy cars and spend many of your waking hours dreaming about your ideal car, then this is simply an app that you will not want to miss! Either way you’ll be glad to know that you can download this app today for just $0.99 from the iTunes Store. So what are you waiting for? Download your copy today!

~David H.

Download Now!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Developer – Christopher Panucci

URL: http://www.trickyourrideonline.com

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© 2010, iPhone and iPad app reviews. All rights reserved. An expedite fee may have been paid for some reviews. We work diligently to ensure that this does not affect the content of the review and strive to keep the journalistic integrity intact. All reviews are the personal opinion of the reviewer.

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If you're anything like us and have been around through multiple device generations, tidal waves of freebies, 99¢ sales out the wazoo, and all the other contributing factors that have lead to the apps section of your iTunes library to be the same completely unmanageable pile of so many games you can barely scroll through them, you know how much of a challenge it is to keep up with the constant stream of updates to the various pieces of your app collection. While slamming a pepperoni-greased finger down on the "update all" button a few weeks ago, I missed a Sketch Nation Shooter [99¢] update which addressed my two major beefs with the game: I dislike anything that requires Facebook to work, as my Facebook is a holy place reserved for friends, family, and incessant Frontierville spam. Secondly, while the custom game sharing was amazing, finding anything quickly became impossible as more and more people submitted their creations.

If this is the first time you've read about Sketch Nation Shooter, you're in for a treat as it's a fantastic idea for an iPhone game. Basically, Sketch Nation provides the building blocks to create simple shooters and avoidance games. You literally draw your ship and the various enemies that will appear in game, photograph them, then as if through some kind of magic the game is able to analyze these photos and import your individual drawings in to the game world. Even if you're terrible at drawing, this entire process is a ton of fun.

If you're not interested in creating your own game (or have an iPod touch and are obviously incapable of photographing your drawings) there is an absolutely massive database of games that other people have created, freely available. Because the designers of these Sketch Nation creations are limited by the tools offered by the sandbox of the game itself, a lot of them feel very similar, but the creativity that has gone in to many of them (particularly the higher rated ones) is often astounding.

For more information on Sketch Nation Shooter, check out our review. You can get a ridiculous amount of play time out of this game if you get sucked in to the creations of others as well as your own and this recent update added a few DLC art modules so you don't even need to be able to draw at all if you'd rather just use the pre-packaged art for your games. With Facebook dependence a thing of the past, and an enhanced interface for browsing user-created games, Sketch Nation Shooter is now even easier to recommend.

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Twitter user @loyalmoses is one of the lucky people who got their iPhone 4 today who posted three full resolution screenshots of Flight Control [99¢] with the new iPhone 4 enhanced update that hit the App Store today. Click these images to see them full size, then imagine that number of pixels on a 3.5" screen. Yes, it blows my mind too.

We likely won't get our iPhone 4's until we pick them up on Thursday (I'm going to be at the flagship store at 5th Ave in New York City… yeesh.) so if you're one of the lucky ones who managed to get an iPhone 4 we're looking for impressions on gaming on the device. Please shoot us an email at tips@toucharcade.com if you'd like to be an official TouchArcade test bunny.

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