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Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

One current day iPad killer app IMO is Procreate. It's basically a more intuitive version of Adobe Illustrator completely optimized for iPad + iPen. I bought my then girlfriend (now wife :D) an iPad for her bday in 2020 accepting the risk that we're spending a lot of money on an activity she might not stick with (digital illustration). Happy to report that I was totally wrong and we have def gotten our money's worth through the countless hours she has logged creating art. If she didn't have such a stellar app like Procreate she probably would have tried out other illustration methods. Not a guerilla marketing plug, I have no vested interest in Apple or Procreate. Just sharing an app outside my space that seems to not get much attention here on HN. You can check out my wife's art at https://instagram.com/gabjoart

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ProCreate and illustrator aren’t comparable. The former is raster while the latter is a vector app.

I think you meant to or should compare it to Photoshop

From context "Easter" was probably autouncorrected from "raster".

I read it as Easter (as in colorful) vs Victorian (as in austere)

Haha yes, autocorrect on iOS 16 autocorrects backwards a word or two and it drives me nuts.

And only the digital painting parts of Photoshop, not photo editing. Which isn't to say that it's not a great app! It's just not a full on replacement for Illustrator of Photoshop.

If you want an alternative to Illustrator or Photoshop, Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo are more in that vein.

How does the iPad version of Photoshop compare to the full desktop application?

I've seen occasional blog posts about X feature from desktop being added to mobile, so definitely didn't launch with feature parity, though they made a big deal about how it was based on the real desktop Photoshop codebase.

But personally I dropped Photoshop when it went subscription (last version I owned was CS5) and I've never tried the iPad version, so no personal experience to compare it.

Not even Photoshop -- Photoshop is mainly about editing, well, photos, while ProCreate is about natural-looking brush painting. Photoshop certainly has brushes, but it's not even attempting any kind of naturalism. People don't generally "paint" in Photoshop. [Edit: from comments below, I stand corrected. Guess it's just the people I know.]

I'm not sure what you call that category of app -- painting apps? Natural-media painting apps? (Although you can choose to make them quite unnatural-looking too if you want.) Fractal Design Painter (later Corel Painter) invented the category I believe, way back in 1991.

I paint in Photoshop...

Photoshop is one of the primary painting apps in the professional industry.

From illustrators to matte painters, photoshop is probably the most common painting app you’ll find.

Procreate is an approximate subset of Photoshop.

Photoshop has an old, strong brand, allthe name is a bit anachronistic, but it has grown to be a product for all 2D visual art.

Are the 3D object layers from CS5 still around?

Both of these statements are untrue.

>People don't generally paint in photoshop

EVERYONE uses photoshop in the painting/art world. Seriously, almost everyone. It's the best app for it, and the only reason people use others in my experience is because they're either free or a one-time payment. Or, because they're painting on a tablet, where (the full) photoshop isn't available.

>while ProCreate is about natural-looking brush painting

This is also not true. People use procreate because of the simple UI, nice gestures, tailored to iPads, for a one-off payment - and because its simply just the best option available on iPads. There's no difference in what you can do with brushes, or "naturalness" between them. If anything, photoshop is better at natural-looking brush painting. If you're wanting natural looking brush painting, also check out the lesser-known Rebelle: https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/about?//produ... - which is designed to more simulate real physical paint, not just in terms of brush patterns but also mixing.

Corel Paint was (is?) hands-down the best natural media art application. I wish it were available on iPad.

Edit: I see Rebelle is quite a bit like Paint. Shame they tell fibs about being “first” to emulate physical colour mixing. Alas, not iPadOS.

Thanks for your comment. I was just about to waste time researching Procreate under the false impression it was vector.

By the way, if anyone is interested in a vector drawing app, I highly recommend Concepts.

Affinity Designer is another really good vector app and exists on desktop too so you can have a single app workflow

Affinity products are like if Adobe never got huge and bloated and instead just kept working on keeping Photoshop/Illustrator/etc modern and usable

except 1/10th of the feature set. one man's bloat is another man's essential feature. as a non professional I eventually had to give up as I couldn't keep CS5 running on Mac. I am still on Intel so I guess I could run an older macOS in a VM.

Yeah agreed. I own all the affinity products and i tried really hard to use them.

They’re just not comparable on desktop to the Adobe equivalents. There’s so many basic features missing right now and their forums mention they’re not planning to add some of them.

Had to go back to Adobe

Personally, I use Vectornator, although it has a history of being a bit buggy on lower-end devices (seems to be fixed now).

The direct competitor is Fresco I think, Adobe's drawing app for iPads

Came here to +1 on the likelihood of transition thoughts and the discovery of procreate.

I also happened to gift an iPad Pro to my wife. Her daily workflow for work are apps like gdocs and buffer and the ipad handles that just fine. I think we underestimate how similar is the regular job workflow and overestimate the particular setup we need for programming / engineering.

And for digital art, she started from 0 and is now a pro at ClipStudio art and Procreate. She is working on her webtoon and has created plenty of nfts and twitter profile pictures on fiverr. I’ve started bringing an ipad to engineering lectures since it has also helped me a great deal with note taking.

I’ll send her your wife’s insta, here is her’s: https://www.instagram.com/yanora_draws/

I bought an iPad in 2020 fully thinking it’s gonna collect dust like all my other tablets over the years.

Nowadays I use it more than my laptop. With the magic keyboard and pen, it really has become the perfect portable computing device. Great for writing, great for sketching diagrams, even good for light coding (like for code samples). And it is fantastic for creating talk slides and even presenting full day workshops. Love it

Was waiting for today’s announcement to upgrade. Running into memory issues lately :D

Is this 11 or 13" one? I found smaller keyboard is too painful to use. Maybe you can get used to as a daily, but will be upgrading to larger one.

I have the 11". Probably couldn't use that keyboard all day, but for a few hours of writing at a time it's perfect.

What size iPad do you have? Thinking about getting the pen but I have the smaller Pro, not sure how good an experience it will be.

I have the 11" and like it specifically because it's small. Perfect for working on the couch

It seems like iPad's main feature is that Apple refuses to put a touchscreen or 180degree hinge on a laptop. Laptop has a bigger screen for drawing and coding.

> It seems like iPad's main feature is that Apple refuses to put a touchscreen or 180degree hinge on a laptop.

And extra sensors. And two good cameras, front and rear, with depth & all the other stuff that iPad/iPhone cameras have that Macbook cameras don't. And make it far thinner and lighter. And better speakers. And iOS so there's a touch-focused OS on it. And a cellular connectivity option.

Dunno. For real coding I need a big monitor, a real keyboard, and a proper mouse. My laptop lives in its dock and the only time the built-in screen/keyboard get used are when I'm traveling and can't work from the home office.

Bought my wife an iPad in 2020 as well with the same fear that it will largely go unused.

She teaches at a university and would normally write copious notes on dozens of notebooks.

She got a copy of Goodnotes for iPad and started using it for her notes. 2 years later, she hasn’t touched any of her physical notes. All her study material is on iPad.

Very happy with the purchase.

I bought my wife an iPad Pro and then a Macbook Air after she complained she couldn't do some things on the iPad. Well, eventually she figured out how to do it on the iPad and the MBA has been collecting dust. I adopted the MBA because my trusty old MBP is damn near geriatric (2015) and it's like a shot in the arm. I should have bought it sooner for myself.

I have to ask, why did you buy an iPad expecting it to collect dust?

I wanted toys, could afford them, and I know myself. For example I have a Switch that was used a lot in its first month that now gets picked up maybe once a quarter for a few minutes.

Fair enough :)

What IDE do you use to code? I found nothing so far.

vscode in github, simply replace any github.com url with github.dev and you've got a full vscode environment with github plugins right in the browser.

Agreed. Procreate is a masterclass in iPad app design. Everything runs so smoothly, the features are deep but the interface is still beginner-friendly, it's a joy to draw in with the Apple Pencil, and it has really good options available for exporting your work. Plus, it automatically records a timelapse of every project that you can render out at the end, which is a small feature that I absolutely adore. All that for a single-time purchase? Heck yeah.

Similar story here, my girlfriend uses the iPad/pencil/procreate to draw commissions for people. She absolutely loves it, went did an art degree but then went down a different career path and is now getting back into it.

In a world filled with apps that require a subscription, a persistent internet connection or filled to the brim with ads, procreate really is a breath of fresh air. Just buy it and use it like in the good old days.

Adobe purchasing Procreate in 3...2.... ;-)

I can’t believe it’s just a one-time $10 fee instead of the ridiculous and increasing creative cloud monthly/annual fees. I don’t know how they do it. Maybe it’ll be an annual fee one day but at least the app is worth it.

Procreate is great, but it really doesn't solve the same problems as Illustrator at all. Apples and oranges.

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