The 7 Best Apps for Apple Pencils
An In-Depth Look at Optimizing Your iPad‘s Stylus
The Apple Pencil has transformed how creators and professionals utilize the iPad, unlocking levels of precision and control rivaling that of pen/paper and graphics tablets. With the Pencil allowing users to sketch, illustrate, annotate, render 3D models, mark up documents and more – finding apps that fully capitalize on its pressure/tilt-sensitivity, low latency and unfettered creativity is crucial.
In this comprehensive guide, we dive deep into the 7 best apps to take full advantage of the unmatched accuracy and responsiveness of the Apple Pencil across a range of digital work – art, design, note taking and beyond:
Procreate – Best for Digital Art
Affinity Designer – Best for Vector Graphics
Nebo – Best for Note Taking
LiquidText – Best for Annotation
Apple Notes – Best Free Note Taking App
uMake – Best for 3D Modeling
ForScore – Best for Musicians
For each app, we‘ll cover: standout features, how it uniquely leverages the Apple Pencil, ideal usage scenarios, limitations, pricing tiers and more – helping you determine which iOS apps will enable you to create your best work yet. Let‘s get started!
Procreate – The Artist‘s Choice for iPad Illustration
In the world of digital art, Procreate reigns supreme as the app that truly unlocks the Apple Pencil‘s full creative capabilities. With over 200 brush presets replicating realistic pens, pencils, markers and natural media, Silky-smooth line precision down to the pixel thanks to a doubled sampling rate, and outstanding palm rejection – it‘s the undisputed king for illustration.
Let‘s examine why it leads the pack when it comes to drawing/painting apps:
Intuitive Interface: Procreate keeps things simple yet powerful – with customizable brushes, layers, filters and advanced features accessible via intuitive menus perfect for graphical users. No learning curve needed!
Incredible Brush Engine: Over 200 customizable brushes available allow you to emulate real-world art materials like oil, chalk, ink and more with incredible accuracy – enabled by the Pencil‘s pressure and tilt-sensitivity. Plus create your own brushes!
Powerful Tools: Transform, distort and enhance your illustrations with a bevy of capabilities like perspective guides, clone stamping, text generation, filter effects, gradients, shape creation tools and more to realize your wildest ideas.
Easy File Management: Quickly import images/photos to use as references or collage elements via the gallery. Export your creations up to 4K resolution in high-fidelity formats like PSD, PNG, TIFF easily.
Enormous Canvas Sizes: Create epic, print-ready artworks, comics and animations that push the boundaries employing massive 16K canvases. Layers help you easily manage complex scenes and characters.
Cloud Integration: Save your works-in-progress to the cloud for backup or to continue on your Mac/iPhone via iCloud Drive integration.
Simply put, if you want the most responsive, feature-rich digital illustration app tailor made to leverage everything the Apple Pencil offers – Procreate can‘t be beat, and for only $9.99 it‘s a steal!
However, the wealth of brushes and features can be overwhelming for novices. Plus file management could be improved with more robust organization tools for your gallery. But overall, it remains the gold standard for spontaneous sketching or refined graphic illustration alike using your iPad.
Affinity Designer – Professional Vector Graphics Unleashed
For graphic designers, UX specialists, architects and more – having a robust vector graphics and layout app that harnesses the accuracy of the Apple Pencil is a must. Affinity Designer beautifully bridges the gap between desktop and iPad by providing users with a pro-grade toolset tailored for pen input.
Here‘s what sets Affinity Designer apart as a phenomenal vector illustration and design app:
Seamless Cross-Platform Parity: Unlike most other iPad vector tools, Affinity Designer uses the same back-end as its desktop counterpart – meaning whatever you create on iPad is fully compatible and editable if you own it on Mac. All features translate 1:1 minus a few shortcuts.
Intuitive Precision Drawing: Built from the ground up for touch and stylus input, it‘s a breeze to sketch out precise icons, logos, diagrams, UI mockups and architectural plans leveraging the exceptional accuracy of the Apple Pencil.
Node Editing: Adjust vector curves, shapes and lines effortlessly thanks to stellar Pencil implementation. Direct node manipulation gives you desktop-like control.
Stunning Visual Effects: From blends, gradients, shadows, glows and filters – you have all the special effects you need to take your vector art to the next level without having to export to other programs.
Huge Library of Resources: Affinity comes packed with a massive library of content like brush packs, color swatches, fonts, templates and more – including full Adobe file format support to import vectors from Ai and EPS. Plus easily share assets across the suite.
Lossless File Support: Export your work in any format under the sun without compromising quality like SVG, PDF, PSD, AI, DXF, JPG, PNG and more.
At $21.99 Affinity Designer for iPad delivers a simply unparalleled feature set tailored towards unleashing your most accurate and creative vector illustrations, wireframes, architectural visualizations, precision drawing/drafting and photo compositions/collages – all powered to perfection by the Apple Pencil. About the only downside is the moderately steep learning curve given the high degree of customizability. But for professional creatives, it‘s a small price to pay for the sheer utility this app brings.
Nebo – Best for Digital Note-taking
For students, teachers, office workers and anyone who needs to digitize their handwritten notes – Nebo reigns supreme in leveraging the low-latency and pressure sensitivity of the Apple Pencil to convert writing into editable text with ease. Plus you can annotate and markup documents with precision…
Key Perks:
- Class-leading handwriting recognition and conversion capabilities
- Syncs notes across iOS devices
- Feature-rich toolkit for annotating PDFs/documents
- Math equation solving engine
- Export notes to a variety of formats like PDF and HTML
Ideal Uses:
- Digital notetaking
- Brainstorming
- Annotating e-books/online articles during research
- Completing classroom worksheets/homework assignments
- Signing electronic documents
Limitations:
- Some laginess in recent updates
- No image import capabilities
- No iCloud Drive integration
Pricing: Free, $14.99 one-time purchase to unlock unlimited use
LiquidText – Supercharged PDF Annotation & Research
Closely examining and marking up PDFs during academic research or document review demands the responsiveness and palm-rejection of a high performance stylus like the Apple Pencil. LiquidText delivers an incredibly efficient, precise and intuitive annotation experience to streamline your workflow…
Nebo certainly isn‘t perfect, but it handily fills the need for a note capturing/conversion app when keyboard input is impractical. Plus it‘s very affordable – making it a great Apple Pencil companion for students and mobile professionals.
Apple Notes – Best Basic Note-Taking App (Free!)
For quickly jotting down thoughts or sketching out concepts – Apple Notes well, pretty much nails basic note capturing. Offering seamless syncing across Apple devices and dead simple usability – it may not have the most robust feature set. But it earns a spot on our list by virtue of just how easy and instinctual it feels with the Pencil…
High Points:
- Comes free with all modern iPad models
- Syncs via iCloud
- Support for basic illustrations/sketches
- Handwriting recognition
Who It‘s For:
- Casual note capturing
- Making grocery/todo lists
- Sketching basic diagrams/storyboards
- Non-intensive illustration
Weak Spots:
- Less sophisticated tools than paid apps
- Laggy at times
- No advanced export options beyond PDF
For quickly jotting, sketching or list making – it‘s hard to beat Apple Notes built-in convenience and straightforward stylus support. Just don‘t expect to produce works of art. But as a free inclusion that syncs across your ecosystem, it removes all barriers to pencil pushing your thoughts into digital bits.
uMake – Unleash Your 3D Creativity
For budding 3D modelers, architects and engineers – having an intuitive way to sketch out ideas in 3D space using the natural feeling of pen on paper is game changing. uMake delivers a one-of-a-kind modeling app for iPad that mimics working with clay or building blocks – enabled by the 6 degrees of freedom and low latency the Apple Pencil offers.
Why uMake Stands Out for 3D Mobile Modeling:
Incredibly Intuitive Direct Manipulation: uMake uses extrusion modeling allowing you to draw 2D profiles which instantly take shape as 3D constructs. The Apple Pencil shines by feeling remarkably natural for manipulating models on screen.
Massive Catalog of 3D Parts: Choose from thousands of premade 3D bits like furniture, vehicles, characters, architectural elements – easily compositing them into imaginative scenes. Great for visual learners!
Seamless CAD Imports: Import thrillingly accurate 2D DWG/DXF CAD files to quickly construct 3D diagrams, industrial parts or architectural visualizations by extruding surfaces with the Pencil.
Fun Real-Time Rendering: See your creations vividly brought to life via real-time rendering allowing you to instantly light, texture map and paint your models as you conceive them.
Generous Cloud Storage: The built-in community comes with over 50GB of online storage for backing up your MiG models online. Easily pick up across devices.
uMake delivers an absolute blast of a modeling experience – enabling makers of all ages and disciplines to quickly sketch out 3D models more intuitively than ever before thanks to the ultra-responsive Apple Pencil. However, output options for fabrication are limited, requiring a separate slicer app for 3D printing. And the monthly fee of $9.99 may deter casual creators. But for anyone yearning to hold 3D design in the palm of their hand – few apps match the joyful creativity uMake catalyzes!
ForScore – Essential for Digital Sheet Music
For musicians hoping to leverage the precision and responsiveness of the Apple Pencil to annotate scores, highlight notes or perfect their technique/conducting – ForScore shines bright. Offering unparalleled capabilities for working with digital sheet music, it features extremely robust markup tools along with an enormous library of premium scores…
Why ForScore Tops the Charts:
Hyper-Accurate Metadata: Search/sort through over a million premium sheet music titles leveraging ForScore‘s meticulously curated metadata – making finding any score a breeze.
Refined Annotation Tools: The Apple Pencil excels when using ForScore‘s highlighting, freehand drawing, shape/text insertion and sticky note features to jot down finger positions or critiques across single pages or entire scores.
Audio Playback: Play along with professional backing tracks to ensure perfect tempo. Loop sections for practice. Record yourself directly in the app.
Sync Across Devices: Access the same finger-annotated scores with playback position/annotations perfectly mirrored on both iPhone and iPad.
Robust Metadata: Create and organize sets with loads of tagging metadata like composer, genre, difficulty level, music ensemble type and much more to always quickly retrieve what you need in large libraries of scores.
Powerful Editing: Transpose to alternate keys, extract parts, reorder pages, merge editions and more tools tailor made for serious musicians.
Quite simply, ForScore combined with the agile flexibility of the Apple Pencil creates the ultimate digital accompaniment for dedicated musical performers at an affordable $15.99 cost of entry. The tools for refining technique, studying scores and developing interpretation excel with stylus-based input – making it a formidable asset for virtuosos and students alike looking to build out their digital sheet music library.
What You Need to Know Before Buying an Apple Pencil
As this roundup of the 7 best Apple Pencil optimized apps conveys – pairing an iPad with a Pencil unlocks entirely new means of digital creation, annotation and productivity compared to standard touch input. But before taking the plunge on purchasing one, it helps to have realistic expectations…
Unparalleled Responsiveness: Using the Pencil to draw, sketch, annotate documents or take notes feels remarkably lifelike and natural – rivaling pen/paper. Expect near instant on-screen feedback.
Sub-Pixel Precision: Thanks to fast refresh rates and tilt/pressure detection, each stroke translates on-screen with stunning accuracy and nuance. Great for intricate illustration or drafting technical diagrams.
Minimal Learning Curve: Within minutes, your iPad will feel like an extension of the Pencil allowing you to write or draw intuitively. Most apps instantly recognize and optimize for stylus input.
No Palm Rejection Accessories Needed: The iPad automatically ignores contact from your palm or wrist thanks to AI-powered algorithms while drawing or writing – eliminating stray marks.
Quick Hot Swapping: Apple Pencils quickly pair whenever in proximity allowing you to swap between using your finger for navigation/touch gestures vs. the Pencil for illustration just as you alternate tools in real life.
Of course, not all applications fully take advantage of the Apple Pencil‘s expressive capabilities equally. But for the ones that do like Procreate, LiquidText or uMake – it opens up iPad usage into entirely new realms of capability beyond standard tablets. Unlocking your creativity, focus and efficiency thanks to that tangible, tactile sense of precision.
FAQs
Does my current iPad work with the Apple Pencil?
For 1st generation – iPad Pros (all models), iPad 6th generation and newer, all iPad Minis from iPad Mini 5 onward and iPad Airs from Gen 3 and beyond. For 2nd gen Pencils – 4th Gen iPad Pro 12.9-inch, iPad Pro 11‐inch (1st generation) or later, iPad Air (4th generation) and later.
Can I use Apple Pencil without having a compatible iPad?
Unfortunately no – the Apple Pencil only works with select iPad models able to directly communicate with it via Bluetooth connectivity. It won‘t function as a standalone stylus or pair with other devices.
Which Apple Pencil should I get?
Apple Pencil 2nd Generation is best for convenience given it magnetically pairs/charges and connects easier. However, Pencil Gen 1 still works great if your iPad is compatible. Just expect to plug it in for charging vs. wireless.
Should I get the 128GB or 256GB iPad if using for illustration?
If you‘ll be working on large multi-layer compositions in Procreate and filling it with content – spring for 256GB+ to future proof yourself. The average digital artist though will be fine with 128GB.
Is there lag when drawing with the Apple Pencil?
Thanks to 240 times per second sensing paired with buttery-smooth 120Hz screens on modern iPad Pros/Airs – you‘ll experience virtually imperceptible input delay akin to writing with an ink pen.
Conclusion
Thanks for joining us on this comprehensive tour de force evaluation of the 7 most exceptional Apple Pencil enabled iPad apps across a variety of creative disciplines! Hopefully this guide has helped match you with the killer apps that will allow your digital illustrations, 3D models, musical sheets and productivity documents alike shine brighter than ever before.
Feel free to bookmark and share this definitive manual for getting the most out of that smooth stylin‘ Pencil with your iPad. And as always let us know which apps you find to be absolute must-have gems we should cover next! From all of us here at iPadable – happy pen pushing!
