Description
Nominated in 2008 Best App Ever Awards for Most Innovative App and Most Original User Interface.
Colors! is a simplistic painting application combining ease of use and powerful painting tools. It is based on modern painting techniques originally developed for drawing-tablets. Whether you are looking for doing doodles, sketching or painting; Colors! is the perfect digital sketch-book.
Visit the online Gallery at http://colors.collectingsmiles.com to see what other artists are creating in Colors!.
Highlights:
- Select one of multiple brushes that suits your painting style
- Use tilt to control opacity or size of your brush
- Pick your color with the easy-to-reach eye-dropper or choose from the competent Hue-circle-styled palette
- Learn how artworks are created by playing back the full creation process, stroke by stroke
- Upload your painting to the online Gallery or download a painting to learn how it was created
Also visit the Colors! Gallery’s forum where you can meet other artists, participate in the weekly challenges, get support and give suggestions for future updates of Colors!
What's New in Version 1.2
- Send your paintings as e-mail through the extended Export function
- Bug fixes
Customer Reviews
Amazing Digital Sketchbook, a few suggestions
This is a great application. I used the DS version for a while and love it, but the iphone/ipod touch version has potential to be even better. So far, it's great. I bought the Pogo stylus to draw with... it's expensive for what it is and I'm sure I could take a trip to home depot and figure out how/what material they use for the tip and make one myself. But it works AMAZINGLY with Colors! It feels like a brush on a smooth surface. Very nice. The higher resolution and pixel density of the iphone makes for a much better painting experience... let's face it the DS screen is kind of small and crappy. However, there are a few things the DS version does better, and some other suggestions for improvement:
1) Pressure sensitivity: I still haven't really figured out how the iphone version with the tilt action is supposed to work for this effect. It seems like it will always be second best to true pressure sensitive screen for painting.
2) Physical button toggles: You can paint faster with the DS shoulder buttons as toggles for color selector and brush size. It's very natural and fast. With the iPhone, you have to tap on the onscreen icons and go down a screen to change brushes/opacity. It's an extra step or two over the DS version. It would be awesome if the iPhone volume buttons could be taken advantage of to toggle these screens like the DS. That's probably not in the SDK though.
3) Uploads to gallery: I'm sure this is coming
4) export of .drw files: I'm sure this is coming
5) Import from iPhone Photos: This feature would MAKE MY DAY. I would love to scan a pencil sketch, sync to my iphone, and then import into Colors! to paint over.
You can do this with BRUSHES, the main competitor. So please, please, please... add this feature!
6) When you pan the image on the iPhone you need to use two fingers. Sometimes I don't place my two fingers down at the same time exactly and end up drawing a line by mistake. It would be great if you could hold down your finger or stylus for a second or less, and trigger the pan function. That way you could pan with one touch point.
Besides these suggestions, I think this is the best sketch/paint program out there. It really is like a portable Painter with Wacom tablet in your pocket. You can do really decent work with it...it's not just a gimmicky application.
Compared to Brushes.
So I have been painting with both Brushes and Colors! now for a few days as a break from work, I spend my workday painting in both photoshop and painter. Here is what I have noticed about the 2 apps.
• Both are great for painting. Colors gets kudos for having come up with a dynamic way to change brush size and opacity while painting by tilting the phone. It isn't intuitive but you catch on to it in just a minute or two.
• Brushes gets a point for a better zoom and scroll. Colors! seems to only zoom in large increments while the zoom on Brushes is super fluid and allows you to zoom at any level you want between 100 and 300%.
• Colors! wins on the color palette design but that is more of an aesthetic choice than a functionality issue.
• Colors! has different brush options that Brushes does. Brushes gives you three brush types from smooth to a brush that shows a hairy, natural media stroke. Colors! allows you to choose hard edge or soft edge brushes and whether to use the tilt accelarometer to control dynamic opacity or size. All in all, I would give the advantage here to Colors!.
• One last thing. Brushes seems more responsive overall than Colors! to me, especially when using undo. Also, Brushes seems to do a much better job of anti-aliasing the artwork. The images I made so far in Colors! all have a more pixelated look to them than the Brushes images, which are smooth even when zoomed in. Brushes also has a nice fill tool which can be used at low opacity to get a glazing effect.
• Brushes interface is absent while you are painting. I like that since Colors! tool bar is always present and I have hit it a few times while painting the lower part of the screen.
• I love the play feature in Colors! where you can watch a sped up replay of the painting being made. This is move of a gimik feature for me but still really cool.
It is hard to pick a winner between these two awesome programs. Colors! big selling point to me is the use of the tilt accelarometer while Brushes has a press and hold eyedropper feature and smooth zooming. Brushes feels a little slicker so far but that is just my experience.
UPDATE: Today (10/26/08) I downloaded the newest update for Colors!. Fantastic update. The Undo is much faster, the color palette interface is slicker in design. A little knod as well for the better choice in spash screens, though, again this is just aesthetics for me. Colors! just became as usable as Brushes and perhaps even a little more so if you like the tilt control opacity and size feature. Bravo, developer, Bravo indeed.
The best mobile solution period.
I have tried every single paint app out there, and hands down Colors! is the best mobile solution period. If you're wondering what this App can do, just go to the Dev's website and view the online gallery. You can even see how it was drawn in the player at the bottom of the screen. I have one less thing to carry with me now, my DS, thanks to the iPhone port :)
Small Request - Upload your colors files to the online gallery, browse and playback colors files from the online gallery.
ps - longtime Colors! user here, I contributed the gallery design :P
- Category: Entertainment
- Updated Jun 17, 2009
- Current Version: 1.2
- 1.7 MB
- Languages: English
- Seller: Jens Andersson
- © 2009 Collecting Smiles
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.
