1. Best Free Drawing Application For Mac
2. Drawing Application For Mac Free Download
3. Drawing Application For Macbook Pro
4. Best Drawing Apps For Mac
5. Best Photo Application For Mac

The iPad and iPad Pro are great for many reasons, but I love them in part for helping me make paper documents and forms almost obsolete: I can't think of the last time I had to print a form and send it through the mail (or worse — fax it). Instead, I rely on iOS's built-in tools and great third-party apps to take care of all my form, document, and signature-related needs.

The Astropad app is the ultimate drawing app for professional illustrators and artists. Pair up your iPad Pro to your Mac and it turns your iPad into a drawing slate. Astropad lets you use your iPad to draw directly to Photoshop, Illustrator and other Mac creative tools. Features and functions: Thisfree drawing software for Macmoves beyond just drawing and provides a sculpted look for images. The program provides a perfect collaboration of 2D and 3D designs and techniques. Image-slicing is a core functionality of the software.

After testing a bunch of PDF markup apps — and asking for your favorites on Twitter, here are my top apps worth considering.

The best drawing apps for iPad can transform your creative life. With most iPads now featuring support for the Apple Pencil, the popular tablet has become a powerful tool for painting and drawing. Once you're armed with the iPad and Apple Pencil of your choice, learning to draw is as simple as.

Markup

Preview may not exist on the iPad just yet, but its excellent markup and annotation tools are available systemwide in iOS as an extension since iOS 11. The Markup extension can be triggered by pressing either the Share button or new Markup button in certain apps — it looks like a pen tip with a circle around it. (You can also tap an email attachment in Mail, or take a screenshot to activate them.)

For many of us, it’s an essential tool that lets us do more, capture more, and live more. Laptop covers for mac.

In the Markup interface, you can add pen, highlighter, or pencil notation; basic shapes like squares, circles, arrows, and quote bubbles; drop a magnifier on the image or document; and even add text or a signature.

It's basic, to be sure, but sometimes basic is all you need.

PDF Viewer

While putting together this roundup, I had a number of people point me in the direction of PDF Viewer, a newer annotation app released at the end of 2016. After a few minutes with the free app, it's clear why they did — between its clean, simplistic interface and powerful annotation tools, PDF Viewer is a perfect in-between for users who need a bit more than iOS's Markup tool provides, but don't need the power of apps like PDF Expert or LiquidText.

A PDF app's interface can frequently appear daunting to the average user, thanks in part to the sheer number of annotation options developers try to shove inside of them, but PDF Viewer smartly simplifies this process. Taking a page from Apple's own iWork suite, the app provides a series of nested views depending on which feature you're using. For instance, if you're looking at a document, you'll be shown the tools for sharing, zooming, and browsing through annotations; tap the annotation button, and the app brings you into Annotation mode, with its various tools — still simplified into easy-to-understand icons.

PDF Viewer can even rearrange, delete, or insert blank pages within a PDF, though it doesn't have some of the more advanced combination features (like merging multiple PDFs or adding existing PDF pages into a document).

Twitter, you did well to bring this app on my radar. It's an excellent one.

PDF Expert

When people ask for an all-purpose PDF markup and annotation app, I tend to send them to Readdle and PDF Expert. The free download offers basic PDF reading, annotation, and digital signatures, but where it shines is in its advanced tools that you can get via in-app purchases.

You can create customizable 'stamps' for oft-used annotations (a friend to copy editors everywhere), edit the structure of the PDF, zip multiple documents together, password-protect your files, and sync with iCloud. The Pro upgrade takes those tools one step further and allows you to physically crack open a PDF and edit it on the spot. Have a spelling error in your ready-to-print proof? Even if you can't jump back to InDesign on your iPad, you can fix it in the PDF.

You may never need the tools that PDF Expert provides, but I for one love that an app this complex and functional exists on iOS.

LiquidText

I've rewritten this intro to LiquidText about five times now, largely because the multitouch annotation app has this slippery way of defying description. A traditional sign-and-form-fill annotation app this is not: LiquidText is built for projects, novels, research papers, and dusty libraries. Lawyer and Mac enthusiast David Sparks describes it as being 'engineered around the idea of reviewing long PDF documents better.' It looks at books filled with post-it notes and string-covered bulletin boards and laughs. There's a better way to organize your research, and the app is it.

At its core, LiquidText focuses on the pain point of annotating lengthy documents, giving users a number of tools to do it in a way wholly unlike any other PDF app on the market. You can use multitouch gestures to pinch together large sections of a document; for instance, you could look an introductory thesis statement next to its midpoint argument to see if it properly connects the dots. You can pull annotations out from the document they belong to — like clippings or post-its — and organize them together or even link them along the right side of the screen. And all of this is lightning fast and wholly enjoyable, thanks to LiquidText's speedy and simple UI.

The Apple Pencil makes all of this even better, giving users specific gestures to highlight and pull out annotations as you review documents. For those who need this kind of workflow, there's no better app than LiquidText out there — and possibly no better workflow.

PDFPen 5

Smile Software brings us useful software like TextExpander and PDFPen. With PDFPen, you're able to instantly view, draw, highlight, add comments, fill, and sign pretty much any document you need, all while on-the-go with your iPad and Apple Pencil, and even your iPhone.

When adding highlights or freehand scribbles, the wrist/palm detection makes sure that you're only marking up the selected area that you want, and nothing else. It works great and you can insert notes and comments as needed throughout the document. Images can be resized, moved, copied, or deleted from documents, and you can import new ones from your Photo Library.

PDFPen is packed with a ton of useful features, including iCloud syncing, as well as third-party service support like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneNote, and more. Documents can also be password protected and encrypted, and it also supports other styluses as well if you don't have an Apple Pencil.

Plus, PDFPen 5 is just a one-time fee, with no additional in-app purchases.

iAnnotate 4

Want to maximize your productivity when it comes to PDFs and documents? Then iAnnotate is a great option to consider.

iAnnotate 4 does your basics, such as letting you open and view PDFs and documents, but you can do so much more with the app than what you may think. The biggest draw with iAnnotate is the iPad Pro multitasking support, allowing you to view two documents side-by-side. It will automatically annotate when you use an Apple Pencil, and you can pan, zoom, and scroll with your fingers at will, no tool switching needed, making it a streamlined experience. There are even keyboard shortcuts if you want to maximize efficiency.

Best Free Drawing Application For Mac

All markups on your documents can be saved directly, letting you view markups in external PDF readers. The Flatten feature compresses annotations onto the document to prevent modifications from being made. A situation that this is great for is when there needs to be multiple signatures on a document, as the Flatten feature prevents others from making unauthorized modifications or changes.

Like PDFPen, iAnnotate 4 is a one-time purchase with no in-app purchases to worry about.

Other apps we tested

For this roundup, I narrowed down an incredibly large pool of PDF apps to highlight the best ones in their respective classes, which naturally meant excluding otherwise beloved apps. Here are some alternative PDF annotation apps that are great, but didn't quite make the cut.

• GoodReader ($6 with IAPs): GoodReader was my stalwart PDF manager and annotation editor for a long time, in large part because it supported uncompressing ZIP files, but I tend to look at it as more file management system than proper PDF annotation app.
• GoodNotes ($8) & Notability ($9 with IAPs): Both of these apps have PDF annotation features, but they're first and foremost note-taking apps.
• Pages (Free): Apple's own Pages has a Smart Annotation feature now, allowing you to markup documents as well.

Your favorites?

Do you have a favorite PDF annotation app I missed? Let me know below so I can check it out for our next roundup!

October 2019: Added PDFPen 5 and iAnnotate 4 to the main list.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

Drawing on iPad: The ultimate guide

Main

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Survey suggests nearly a quarter of U.S. Apple customers own an Apple TV

Research conducted by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners has revealed that almost 25% of US Apple Customers own an Apple TV.

We spend so much of our working lives on our computers that it’s easy to forget that they can be an artistic outlet as well. But you don't have to be a master illustrator or shell out hundreds of dollars for drawing software just to enjoy some creative recreation. Setapp offers a range of creative apps that turn your Mac into your own private studio, no brushes required.

Drawing software for Mac

Get a best creative apps for keeping your Mac in shape. Best drawing tools in one pack, give it a go!

How to draw on a Mac

Whatever your skill level, drawing a little bit every day has clear psychological benefits. And what better way to get into the habit than to start sketching, doodling, and even painting right on your computer?

Step 1: Choose drawing software and tools

Of course, part of the fun of the digital world is that it can make so many colors, textures, and effects available. You’ll want something that gives you access to this wide range of options without being too complicated.

Tayasui Sketches is a great drawing app for the Mac. It packs a ton of functionality into a minimal interface, letting you focus on your creativity, not on the buttons. Plus, the background and brushes all give the sense of drawing on real paper, not a blank digital canvas. You can start drawing using your mouse, or attach any standard tablet for the flexibility that a stylus or Apple Pencil provide.

Basic drawing tools to start

The best drawing app can give you a freedom to express your ideas as digital art. It provides a number of tooltip options for its paintbrush tool that mimic the effect of real paintbrushes. Simply select the brush, pencil, or marker type you’d like to use, choose your color, and start painting.

The tooltips mimic the physical qualities of different media; markers offer a thick, opaque line while watercolors are semi-transparent on the page, bleeding and fading to different intensities for a looser look. As you work with the Tayasui Sketches, you’ll get a sense of each medium’s opacity and learn how to incorporate them into your unique style.

Building up a drawing

Choose the app that allows to create an unlimited number of layers to draw on. This lets you lay down foundation sketches before you come in with a paintbrush or marker. You can also experiment with different washes and overlays on top of your drawing without fear of ruining it. With layers, you can try out various styles and versions of the same painting, or even delete underlying layers for an interesting effect.

Watching your creative in progress

If you’d like to improve your painting and drawing, or show others how to achieve the same effect, you can record your process to review later or share online. Nobody becomes a master overnight, but by referring back to paintings you’re proud of or soliciting advice from other artists on your technique, you’ll know where to focus your effort. Plus, you’ll have the whole record of your improvement in one place.

Drawing Application For Mac Free Download

Step 2: Painting tips to draw faster

Once you’ve gotten comfortable with drawing and painting, you can use a number of apps to push your work to the next level.

Image color picker

How do you select an exact color to match? The fastest way is to use a color picker. It allows to click on the image to get the color of a pixel.

Sip lets you add any color you encounter on the web to a set of endlessly customizable palettes. It seamlessly integrates with paintbrush apps for the Mac, including Tayasui Sketches, so you can use colors you sample in your own work. Color picker lets you zoom in and out to select exactly the right source shade, plus its built-in color editor lets you adjust your selected shades as needed.

Retouching tools

As strong as your painting skills might be, everyone can benefit from a little post-production help. That’s where CameraBag Pro comes in. This robust image editor is set up with beginners in mind. Even if you’re not a PhotoShop pro, you can sharpen, blur, and make small corrections with ease. You might also find that the app’s extensive collection of filters add another layer of complexity to your work.

Drawing Application For Macbook Pro

Step 3: Organize your art

Best Drawing Apps For Mac

Keeping track of your work can be a challenge, especially when you’re producing variations on the same image. The image managing app Emulsion lets you examine, annotate, and organize pictures in folders and cataloging your image library using multi-level tags from a single window. You’ll be able to set up automatic tags for different projects, zoom in to the pixel level with its loupe function, and export your work in any image format. Plus, this organizer lets you size, crop, and share your art with ease, integrating seamlessly with dropbox and other cloud hosting services.

Best Photo Application For Mac

Between its flagship drawing and painting tool and its suite of helpful image enhancers and organizers, Setapp can help both beginners and experts get over MS paint once and for all. Make sure you get the right tool (and the right tooltip) for the job.