5 Essential iPad Pro Apps Every Creative Professional Needs
With these, you too are an expert.
Clocking in at a vast 12.9 inches of Retina screen real estate, Apple’s largest tablet to date, the iPad Pro, was made available for purchase online just last week. Along with the Apple Pencil peripheral, the iPad Pro is every creative professional’s dream, and with the accompanying wealth of apps available (some of which have been engineered specifically for the gargantuan tablet), the iPad Pro does much to unlock anyone’s creative potential. Take a look at our selection of the best iPad Pro apps below to make the most of your newest canvas.
1. Astropad
Astropad turns your iPad into a sketchpad that is capable of wirelessly interfacing with your Mac and a variety of professional programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Corel Painter, Manga Studio, and Pixelmator. The newest version 1.2.5 updates the app to support the iPad Pro for even more creative freedom. Use it to full effect with the pressure-sensitive capabilities of the Apple Pencil. Available here for $20 USD.
2. uMake
uMake is an app tailored specifically to automotive designers and design-oriented car fanatics alike. As shown in the video below, uMake allows 3D modeling of car bodies by way of sketching and intuitive gestures to simplify otherwise complex tasks. Anyone can download the demo version to try their hand at automotive design, but for the real professionals, uMake is available here for $15 USD per month, or $150 USD per year.
3. Paper
Of the free sketching apps, Paper is by far the most popular for its ease of visual expression and used by everyone from web designers through to bloggers. Developers FiftyThree have updated Paper to reflect the increased capabilities of the iPad Pro, in the process upgrading its Ink Engine to accommodate the Apple Pencil. Available here for free.
4. Adobe Comp
Adobe Comp pairs with Photoshop Sketch and Photoshop Fix to allow creators to quickly design for everything from mobile apps to wireframes for webpages. The Apple Pencil takes a special role in this app, as sketching gestures onto the interface takes the place of fiddling with minuscule on-screen buttons, which is adeptly demonstrated in the video below. Available here for free.
5. iMovie
This isn’t a drawing app, but to not use this powerful tablet to make short films would be a bit of a waste. The iPad Pro’s formidable, all-new A9X processor chip allows the simultaneous playing of not one, not two, but a whopping three 4K video streams in iMovie for ease of editing. iMovie already comes installed on all iPad Pros, and can be used immediately upon device activation.
