iPastels

Draw and paint with digital pastels that behave just like real ones! This app simulates many aspects of pastel painting, including soft pastels, oil pastels, pastel pencils, and realistic color blending right on the screen. Perfect for creating beautiful works of art, but also for practising or for a quick sketch whenever and wherever you have a burst of inspiration. Pastelists and other artists can try out ideas and compositions before starting on a new painting in real life. Beginners will be able to practise and refine their skills, without the added cost of pastel sticks and specialty papers. (Please note that since version 3.0, this app requires a Metal-compatible computer, which means most Macs 2012 and later.) • Realistic Pastel Simulation • Realistic Color Blending • Change and Adjust Size, Force, Color while Painting • Layers • Wide Color Support • Engine Based on Metal₁ (with 128-bit color and floating-point arithmetic) • Developed with Swift₁ ₁ Since version 3 (the code was completely rewritten). REALISTIC PASTEL SIMULATION We have put years of research and hard work into making our own painting engine from scratch, and we continuously work to improve it. The engine is based on Metal, uses 128-bit color and it always utilizes floating-point arithmetic for increased accuracy and a high dynamic color range. The app calculates everything in real-time, instead of just dragging a simple “brush” across the painting. Each stroke interacts with what’s already there, as it would in real life. One of the most widely used techniques in pastel is to blend the colors into each other on the paper, as part of the painting process. This is fully supported in iPastels! When painting with soft pastels, you can apply different colors and then use Smudge or the Cotton Swab to blend and smoothen the colors. With oil pastels, the blending is mostly done by the pastel sticks themselves, but occasionally you may want to use Smudge or Cotton Swab for softening backgrounds and shadows. You can also use pastel pencils for the initial sketch and for adding details, or for making full pencil drawings. ADJUST WHILE PAINTING All the control knobs in the toolbar can be changed and adjusted while you paint, by using the number keys (1, 2, 3...) on your keyboard. FULL SCREEN PAINTING The Mac’s full screen mode is supported. You can remove the toolbar if you place the pointer on it and scroll toward the screen/window edge, or if you press the Tab key on your keyboard. To get it back, scroll inward from near the edge. You can also move the toolbar to the other side by scrolling it in that direction, or by pressing Shift-Tab. ZOOMING, PANNING, ROTATING On a trackpad, you can pinch to zoom, and use the rotation gesture to rotate the picture. Scroll over the picture to pan. On the keyboard, use the Arrow keys (pan) and - + buttons (zoom). Use the Space key or the smart zoom gesture to reset zoom, pan, and rotation. Again to go back. LAYERS Everything from selecting a layer to adding new ones can be done in the Layer Control. To open the Layer Control, click the button that has a mountain/house/flower (symbolizing the selected layer). Flower = topmost layer House = any layer in-between Mountain = bottom-most layer You can also change the color of the paper beneath the layer(s), by clicking “Paper Color”. COLORS There’s a scrollable palette, where you can pick colors, as well as store new ones. Adjacent to the palette are three control knobs that adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of the current color. Note that you can adjust the color while you paint! The Current Color button is the large colored rectangle next to the knobs. Clicking this button brings up a menu where you can add, remove the current color to/from the palette.