PaperByFiftythree
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Daily Update for October 1, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Paper for iPad lets you print physical notebooks of your work
Paper by FiftyThree (free, with in-app purchases) is an incredibly cool sketching/painting app for iPad that provides virtual notebooks into which those with artistic talents can pour their visions. Now FiftyThree has teamed up with Moleskine to let artists create physical books of their work with a tap in the app. What do these two companies call their collaboration? Book. Pressing the print button in the app lets the artist grab 15 of their favorite digital drawings from Paper and have them printed in a Moleskine notebook that matches the 4:3 ratio of the iPad screen. The Book is printed on "sustainable matte ivory-colored paper" that is accordion-folded into a Moleskine cover of your design, complete with the trademark elastic band. As demonstrated in the video below, Paper and Book are perfect for creating personal one-of-a-kind gifts or just archiving digital doodles in a very tangible way. Our 2012 review of Paper demonstrates just how unique the app is; now Book brings the art of Paper home.
Paper by FiftyThree updated with innovative color mixing
Back when TUAW posted a review of Paper by FiftyThree for iPad (free, with in-app purchases for brushes and other features), one of the complaints I had was that the app worked with a limited palette of nine colors and didn't provide a way for artists to mix their own virtual paints. Well, a new upgrade to Paper available today provides a color mixing capability and other new features as well. The new features in version 1.2.1 of Paper by FiftyThree include the Mixer, a way to create your own custom palettes. The Mixer, like many features available in the app, is an in-app purchase (US$1.99) and it uses a virtual "paint pot" to blend colors. If you're not thrilled about mixing your own colors, there are three new palettes included with the app. One of the other great features of the new version is the addition of support for Ten One Design's Pogo Connect pressure-sensitive stylus ($79.95), which TUAW reviewed a few weeks ago. Pressure input works quite well when drawing, sketching or even painting with Paper by FiftyThree. The upgrade, like the app, is available for free on the App Store.
Microsoft resurrects Courier through Project Austin app for Windows 8, sparks nostalgia (video)
Many who've been following Microsoft's tablet efforts for years will have a soft spot for the Courier, a creative-focused device axed because it didn't fit the Windows puzzle. However, it looks like you just can't keep a clever idea down. Developers at Microsoft have revived the dream through Project Austin, a Windows 8 app based around the visual concept of a notebook. Pen aficionados can choose different paper types and paste in photos, but they're deliberately kept away from typing, searching and other elements that would complicate the idea. It should sound familiar: it's a rough (if possibly unintentional) Windows doppelganger to FiftyThree's Paper for iPad, which itself was designed by some of the former Courier team. A company spokesperson won't say if or when Project Austin will be available in a complete form for the public, although there's not much point until Windows 8 arrives on October 26th. Thankfully, programmers keen to see what Courier might have been -- if just in bits and pieces -- can already download the source code for themselves.
Daily iPad App: Paper by FiftyThree may make you an artist
I am not an artist. I love art, but don't have the necessary skills (except for those I've picked up on my own) to really do anything that I'd want other people to see. When some of the early iPad drawing/painting apps started coming out, I eagerly bought them to try, but found that my lack of talent was just transferred to a new medium. A new iPad app, Paper by FiftyThree (Free, in-app tool purchases available) may actually help me to become a half-decent artist. After you've downloaded Paper, you have a one tool available - Draw. Draw is an expressive ink pen that responds much like the steel-nibbed pens we used in art class in 7th grade, except there's no way to drip ink on yourself or the page. All of the other art tools -- Color, Sketch, Write, and Outline -- are available through in-app purchase for US$1.99 each or as a combined "Essentials" purchase for $7.99. Launching Paper, you see three Moleskine-like notebooks on the screen. To open one for viewing, you tap on it, and you're immediately rewarded with a two-page view of the notebook. To zoom in on a set of pages, make another tap; to get back to the notebook view, you pinch two fingers together. New notebooks can be added from the main screen of the app by tapping a "+" button, or erased with the tap of a trash can button. You can name each notebook, and give it a cover photo or texture. Once you're in a page view in a notebook, you can begin to draw or paint. I immediately purchased the Color (water painting) and Sketch (pencil drawing) tools; I frankly wish I had just spent the full $7.99 and bought the Essentials. When drawing or painting, you can either use the eraser tool or a "rewind" function to get rid of mistakes. Rewind uses an swipe and rotate gesture to "turn back the clock" on your misdeeds. The tools are all available from a tool tray that slides up with a swipe and can be put away with another swipe. I found myself grabbing a tool and color, then dropping the tray out of sight so I could concentrate on my work. For each tool, you have a limited palette of nine colors. Unfortunately, you can't change that palette. The Fifty-Three team says that they want people to concentrate on creating, not getting picky about colors. While this works well with some tools, like Color, which let you blend transparent colors, it's kind of annoying with the pen and pencil tools. You can layer different colors, of course, so I'm not sure that alternative palettes are a definite need -- instead, Paper users just need to understand how to layer colors properly. A quick look at the comments on the FiftyThree support forums shows that many people are asking for alternative palettes. I've dabbled in watercolors in the past, and I found the Color tool to be the closest thing yet to a watercolor set for the iPad. The tool works just like a watercolor brush, letting you build up color by laying on more "paint," blend colors, even use the white paint like a gouache. I didn't try the Write and Outline tools, but they are essentially fine and broad point markers for marking up your paper. The Sketch tool is also the best pencil-drawing tool I've found for the iPad. Using my Adonit Writer Pro stylus with Paper, I felt like I was really drawing on a piece of paper. Speaking of the paper, your "canvas" is 2048 x 1536 pixels, so it takes advantage of the Retina display. Images that you create can be shared through Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter or by sending an email. When you share an image, it's exported as a JPEG at 1024 x 768 pixels. I found a good way to get full-resolution images -- I just do an iPad screenshot, and then the image shows up in my Photo Stream in full resolution. How good is Paper? Let's just say that every other "art app" that I purchased in the past has been taken off of my iPad. I love the concept and execution of this app, and it's going to be my sketch and watercolor pad from now on. Paper makes me wish that I hadn't spent a lot of money a few years ago putting together a portable watercolor kit...
