The Best iPhone and iPad Apps for Art and Design

For those of you creative types out there, these are the best iPhone and iPad apps for art and design.  If you’re like me, and you’re not overly creative, maybe these apps will help you in that area.  Either way, a definite read and something to check out.

Procreate: Best iOS Painting App

This sounds appealing to me, as it is designed for both pros and people who just want to play around with design.  It also appears to be like desktop software, but while maintaining the feel of an app.  Procreate is amazing because it has enough features and brushes to be flexible, and provides quick and easy access to them all.  While I love Photoshop, I feel like this would be a touch simpler to use for some things.  If you have an iPad Pro, and a pencil, you are going to be in artsy heaven.

Affinity Photo: Best iPad Pro Image Editor

Serif has taken on Adobe from the desktop route, and now they’re taking on Adobe with their iPad app Affinity Photo.  The app is a full fledged image editor, which gives you some of the features of the desktop version with the touchscreen and pencil abilities of the iPad.  If you’re using an iPad Pro in particular, you’re going to get a fast, immersive, tactile experience.  This isn’t a cut down version on their desktop software either.  It is desktop quality software, but looking forward to the future, rather than focusing on the past.

PixelMator: Best iOS Consumer Image Editor

PixelMator, the Mac version, is basically Photoshop before it got super complicated.  Remember that?  But the iOS app builds on the desktop version in terms of immediacy and usability.  Some of you professionals might not be happy about some of the missing features, but it’s still pretty feature packed considering it’s an app.  You get layers, all of the usual adjustment and editing options and a ton of impressive photographic filters, and some fun painting tools.  rEgardless of what you’re making, PixelMator is going to get the job done for you.

ProCam: Best iOS Camera App

There are a ton of iOS camera apps, including Apple’s own.  But you can replace it (or all of them) with ProCam and you will gain access to a wealth of tools for improving your digital snaps.  There are different shooting modes – such as time lapse for when you want to film a documentary of sorts.  Or anti-shake for the shutter, and all kinds of other manual controls and useful overlays for improving compositions.  After you’ve taken the pictures, you will find plenty of editing tools to mess around with.  You can crop, straighten and trim a photo, add filters or just go crazy!

SKRWT: Best iOS Photo Correction App

SKRWT’s developers call their app the “missing link in high end smartphone photography”.  Why?  Well, its designed to deal with distored lines created by the wide-angle lens’ found in modern day mobile phones.  Which makes this an app for straightening things out.  You can correct perspective and lens distortion, and auto-crop to speed things along.  The tools are straightforward, but powerful.  There are some other apps out there that can do similar things, but not with such efficiency.

Mextures: Best iPS Photo Filters App

Mextures tries to solve the problem that the character within the photography is being list.  And this is because iPhone cameras are becoming increasingly more powerful.  Which gives us some pretty amazing, high quality and super detailed photos.  Mextures includes some editing tools, but is going to be most interesting for those of you who want to add texture to your image.  The app includes some editing tools as well.  The elements in the app include film scans, grunge and gradients, all of which can be added and experimented with a non-destructive manner using a robust layers system.

Imgplay: Best GIF Creator

Who doesn’t love to create GIFs?  Or at least see them.  And, because of that the animated GIF is the format that just won’t die. Maybe ever.  With ImgPlay, you can take whatever image is on your Camera Roll and convert it into a GIF – video, a series of stills, Live Photos or Burst mode sequences.  You can add captions, edit frames, slather it in filtures, adjust playback speed and decide whether the animation should bounce back and forth.

Plotagraph+: Best iOS App for Animating Photos

As I just mentioned, everyone loves a GIF.  Which means that still images aren’t as appealing to people any more.  But in order to make the animated still, you need a series of snaps or a video.  Until now, because Plotagraph+ can help you make any photo move.  You mask out areas that you want to remain motionless, and drag arrows around to suggest the parts that should move.  You can make static storm clouds or even still water move.  Maybe this is a bit too niche, but Plotagraph+ is a really fun for anyone wanting to try something different with their photos.

Graphic: Best iPad Illustration App

We mentioned before that PixelMator is kind of like Photoshop.  Which means, Graphic is like an iPad version of Adobe Illustrator.  It’s ideal for designing a logo, a floor plan, or an app interface.  Given its ambition the nature of the interface, Graphic is bit more difficult to use than its desktop brother.  But it still goes a long way for those of you who want to get your Illustrator fix. Especially if you’ve got an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil.

Pixaki: Best Pixel Art App for iPad

I mean, this really isn’t my thing, but if you are nostalgic for the time when video games were extremely pixelated, Pixaki is for you.  There is more to the app than nostalgia, you will also feel that the artist laboured over the position of every dot.  Which produces a labour of love, of sorts.  Nothing beats Pixaki though, for fashioning your own retro graphics.  The app is desktop quality and has a ton of features and tools.  Whether you’re working on a delicate isometric landscape masterpiece. Or you want to try your hand at crafting animation that resembles something that could have once lived on a Commodore Amiga, Pixaki is for you.

Comic Life 3: Best iOS Comics Creator

If you’re fed up sending plain boring photos to people, Comic Life can inject some much needed creativity into your images.  Simply, pick a page layout from a range of templates, drop in your photos, add captions, speech balloons and sound effects.  One of the great things about Comic Life is how you can tweak everything. Unleash your inner Stan Lee and fine tune everything from panel sizes to the direction of speech balloon tails.  There is even a built in script editor for honing the narrative of your master piece.  Once you’ve finished you can export as a PDF, JPEG or even an EPUB.

Over: Best iOS App for Adding Text to Images

If you want to quickly craft  a personalized greeting or want to create a brilliant meme, you need Over.  It is a great app due to its power and usability.  When you launch, you can choose from free artwork or one of your own photos.  You can add as many blocks of text as you would like, and style them along the way.  Unlike other apps, you can pause your progress at any point, save the project and return to it later.  This gives Over a desktop like feel and ensures it’s equally good for quick edits or even more thoughtful compositions.