Top 5 iPad Apps Any Graphic Designer Should Have

“I think if you’re starting out early in the process by talking about your ideas for solutions, you’re already not listening. I think you need to enter into any design project with that zen learner’s mind of ‘I don’t know what I don’t know.”

– Kim Goodwin

If you have an iPad and also are a graphic designer you’re in luck. Every creative professional should be capable of designing at home, at work, and on the go – you don’t know when creativity will hit you, so why not be prepared to tackle it and squeeze all its creative juice.

We managed to compile a list of top 5 iPad apps any graphic designer should have. Emphasize on should.  You want to achieve greatness? Do you want to withstand the test of time? Then scroll down and get the help you need!

1. Paper

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This awesome app is brought to us by FiftyThree, and they managed to get “ App of the year 2012” award. Paper – “is where ideas begin. It’s the easiest and most beautiful way to create on iPad. No settings. Always beautiful – like great tools should be. Just pick up a tool and instantly begin to Sketch, Write, Draw, Outline and Color. Draw comes free with Paper.

Our custom ink engine reacts to your movements to optimize each tool for the process of creation. Stream pages to Tumblr, send them over email, or share pages with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Your ideas as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings and share them.” It’s a free app at the moment, so get it while it’s still hot – yup, even though if you’re 2 years late, its quality hasn’t dropped.

2. Adobe Ideas

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Adobe Ideas – “gives you the ability to draw freeform vector illustrations wherever you are. Replace your pen and paper with a huge virtual canvas, customizable brushes, and pressure sensitive stylus support. With a Adobe Creative Cloud membership, easily sync Adobe Ideas projects to Creative Cloud and open them for refinement in Illustrator.

With Ideas, it’s easy to take your initial concept to finished design. You can also share your designs to other applications such as Behance and Photoshop Touch.” It is also available for the iPhone and iPad – as a free downloadable app. Compatible with iOS 5.1 or later – iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

3. Sketchbook Pro

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I’m currently using the desktop version on my PC and I got to say that I’m more than pleased with this software. I haven’t personally tested it on the iPad, but it can’t work worse. And we have reviews from thousands of app curators all over the world – “I truly love this app & have used it for so many projects. It is extremely versatile and user friendly, & easy to learn. I don’t want to use any other drawing app, they’re just not as powerful.

My biggest issue is the lack of a selection tool. Many, many other users have asked for an update with a selection tool for years. The lack of selection/lasso and copy/paste seems such an egregious & obvious oversight. It is such a natural part of the workflow. Not having it adds hours of work to complex drawings. Adding this feature in a future update would make this app unbeatable by any other mobile drawing app. “

Sketchbook Pro makes your entire screen a canvas, where your creativity has open space to unleash itself – “Using the same paint engine as its desktop counterpart, SketchBook Pro delivers a complete set of sketching and painting tools through a simple and intuitive user interface. Designed for the iPad, SketchBook Pro allows you to capture your best ideas, no matter where you have them.” The thing is that you have to cough up 5 bucks for it, but it’s totally worth it.

4. Adobe Photoshop Touch

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This behemoth of a software breaks every single bone in the competitive industry. “Photoshop Touch for iPad lets you combine images, apply professional effects, and share results through Facebook and Twitter — all from the convenience of your iPad. A new complement to Photoshop Touch is also available: Adobe Photoshop Mix is a free iPad app that enables you to combine and cut-out images, apply looks, and perform non-destructive edits to your images, all compatible with Adobe Photoshop CC.”

For this excellent program you need to pay up 12$. Yeah, the price can scare you away, and put you on the path of seeking a free software, or at least something cheaper, but quality is expensive. For awesome features such as: “Core Photoshop features like layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters. The camera fill feature for using your iPad camera to fill areas on layers.

The Scribble Selection tool for selecting part of an image to extract. Refine Edge for capturing hard-to-select elements like hair. The ability to work on high-res images (up to 12 megapixels). Step-by-step tutorials and an inspiration gallery. Integrated Google Image Search.”-  12$ is an appropriate, and decent sum of money to pay.

5. Inspire Pro

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Inspire Pro is just for the iPad. Released on July 30^th, 2014 it has quickly gotten to the top of the charts, and a notoriety of being a great app that any designer should use. Don’t fret, Inspire Pro doesn’t care if you are a beginner, intermediate or an expert at drawing – it suits your needs perfectly. But for this cool little thing you will need to pay up 10$ – “Available only on the App Store, Inspire Pro delivers an amazing painting, drawing and sketching experience to your iPad.

Our proprietary painting engine Sorcery™, based on OpenGL, takes full advantage of the GPU to render brush strokes with brilliant 64-bit color, laser-sharp sub-pixel precision and incredibly fast speed. While the strokes of a wet oil paint brush look beautiful on their own, the breathtaking blending effects of a dry brush will absolutely stun you.

Graze the canvas with a tiny bit of pressure to add a subtle blur to your artwork or use stronger pressure to actually mix existing colors on the canvas together to create new ones! Whether you are a beginner, expert or somewhere in-between, you will enjoy the simplicity and power of Inspire Pro.“

This is our list of top 5 iPad apps any graphic designer should have. If you think we missed something crucial to the list, please feel free to post in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you!