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'Paper' Introduces New Color Mixing Feature and Support for Touch-Sensitive Stylus

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paperlogoiPad sketchbook app Paper, an Apple Design Award winner, has been updated with a clever new color picker that lets users "mix" colors like they would mix different color paint together.

The app also adds support for the Pogo Connect stylus, an $80 drawing tool that uses Bluetooth 4.0 to determine how hard an artist is drawing and Paper adjusts accordingly.

The Verge has more on how the new color mixer works:

Paper now includes a circular color mixer that lets you tap to pick a color (using RGB sliders, if you'd like), then swipe in a circle clockwise to mix colors and counter-clockwise to unmix. A long press lets you save the color you've made to one of the many black color slots the app now provides. Color is a $1.99 in-app purchase, like many of the app's add-on brushes. If you don't choose to buy it, you still have access to the palette of colors that shipped with the free app.


Paper for iPad is a free download from the App Store, with additional drawing brushes and the color picker available as in-app purchases. [Direct Link]

Top Rated Comments

APlotdevice Avatar
177 months ago
Ugh, I wish all these pressure sensitive stylus makers would come together and agree on an standard. It's such a mess right now.

(Either that or for Apple to get over their pen phobia and produce their own.)
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
177 months ago
This is one of those apps that I love not only for what it is but for the philosophy behind it. To compare it to other art applications is to miss the point completely.

Powerful tools are often also very complex tools. While Paper is powerful, it isn't designed to be a complete art app and, frankly, that's a good thing. The vast majority of people won't ever use 90% of what the other more "fully featured" art apps can do. All those extra features serve only to add complexity to the app. Rather than empowering the user they slow him down, forcing him to wade through and manage fiddly sub screens and what-not.

Paper is designed to give you a large canvas, some simple but powerful tools and then to sod off out of your way and let you get on with sketching and jotting! No, you won't use this app to create a masterpiece (probably), nor will you use it to design professional quality graphics. You'll use Paper to create quick and beautiful images as part of your creative flow. It's a tool, and a toy. It's about expression, not mastery. I applaud 53 for daring to be different and happily pay for the IAP because I want to see more stuff like this.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
HappyDude20 Avatar
177 months ago
One evening I purchased the complete in-app pack purchases and to this day i'm glad I did. It only cost me under $10 and it's worth it. I've always been on my iPad and notice I used it only when I'm outside. But being able to draw with more colors will be totally worth it.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
177 months ago
"Think it would be good for my little boy?"

Paper is my boy's (ages 7 and 9) favorite drawing app. Only feature they have ever asked for is more colors. "Daddy, I want make this Pokemon bright green. I can't get the colors I want!"

Beyond that, and now fixed, perfect app. Each boy has his own 'notebook' in the app with their own drawings as a cover. They love it and get annoyed at other apps when two-finger cirlces don't undo actions or a swipe up from the bottom doesn't bring up the tools!

And the app is FREE to download. You get the caligraphy pen and the eraser and you can create as many books/pages as you want. I used just these for months before springing for the other tools, so you CAN do a lot with the free version. It isn't 'hobbled' at all.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
177 months ago
Looks fantastic, this is the kind of simple yet functional workflow that separates average UI design form really great UI design.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
177 months ago
An amazing addition to a brilliant app :)
Good job 53! Keep improving it!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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