Inspire Pro

Inspire Pro

Price: $8

Everyone remember their first. Back when I first got the iPad I was trapped in a weird place. I spent all my money on the thing (I was paying debts and bills and pulled together enough for one to reward myself as well as sketch digitally.) For a long while I was stuck using free apps and didn't have a stylus to paint with. When I did finally get a few paid apps I wanted to spread out the money and get as many as possible and thought that SketchBook Pro was a little too much (even though the investment does go a long way.) Instead I settled for Inspire Pro which cost a reasonable $3 which was on sale at the time.

At the time when I bought the iPad there wasn't a lot of options in the way of apps since all the developers were scrambling to get their apps out there. Even what was available wasn't reaching the full potential of what the tablet could do. However even when I return to Inspire Pro (which received a hefty update recently) I find it hasn't changed very much at all. It's a painting app that's not big on many features but has the heart and spirit.

One of the few projects from Inspire Pro

You have a canvas like back ground and can paint on it with five different brush types. What I found to be the best part about Inspire Pro is the dry brush. You can blot down a bunch of colour onto the page and on the fly change to a paintless brush to spread the colour about. Apps like ArtRage do this but it's overly complex and my first gen iPad struggles to keep up with it, making it virtually unusable. It creates a unique effect I don't get from any other app, it's endearing and dare I say enjoyable to use. Undo/redo is there to protect from mistakes, making it better than watercolour to me.

The problems that come into play are the lack of layers that come from the higher tier painting apps. I think it would change Inspire Pro into something different altogether but it stops it short of a satisfying app when everything you do is to be done on one plane. More preparation would go into a painting creating the background first and being careful not to destroy it too much when painting the foreground.

Inspire Pro broke my iPad painting virginity and I did have much fun with it but not enough to stick with it. Good for a laugh but not good enough to hold your interest for long.

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