Pussyowl – The Owl & Pussycat Web Comic

I thought I’d take some time out from the game (news soon!) to write a brief review of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, which brings us one step closer to the holy grail of a portable, digital sketchbook capable of editing our desktop projects. As a rival to the iPad it also boasts all the advantages of an Android operating system, greater functionality and customisation at the expense of ease. But for this review I will be focusing on it’s capabilities as an artist’s tool.

Wacom dominate the creative technology industry with their Intuos and Cintiq range of devices. They took an abortive step into mobile devices with the Inkling portable pen which was sadly lacking in accuracy and ultimately purpose. Meanwhile Apple dominate the home tablet market, with an impressive array of creative apps on App store. However without a pressure sensitive screen, the decision to use a tablet over desktop is always something of a compromise.

Which bring us to the Samsung Note 10.1. Boasting a 1,024 pressure screen and the S-Pen, it is the only tablet to provide Wacom standard pen precision (Windows 8 tablets have the technology but are currently unsupported by drivers). This creates a much more fluid and intuitive drawing experience and makes the Note the tablet of choice for artists on the go.

As ever with evolving tech things are not perfect. The biggest drawback being a small base of apps in comparison to iOS. However if you’re willing to do some digging you will find an app for your creative needs. Here are my impressions of the various apps on offer.

Sketchbook Pro for Tablet
Pros: Sketchbook Pro has a slick user interface and a large number of custom brushes. Drawing presents no lag and handily, the app ignores non-pen touches so you can rest your wrist on the screen and it won’t register.
Cons: The Android version has limited features compared to iOS. The pen mode is only compatible with some brushes. Sketchbook Pro opens .psd files but doesn’t leave the layers intact which means it’s more suited for ground-up work and exporting. Personally I find the brush interface for changing opacity and brush size cumbersome.

Layer Paint
Pros: LayerPaint presents a simple toolkit which covers the fundamentals. There are no limits to canvas size or number of layers you can use and the app retains layers when importing photoshop .psd files from Dropbox (I’ve opened a 50mb 40-layer file with some slowdown in performance). As with Sketchbook LP doesn’t register non-pen touches to the screen, the volume buttons double as undo/redo and the tool set is being expanded regularly.
Cons: It has a large, ugly and often unintuitive UI. There are a limited selection of brushes, though the main types are covered.

Adobe Photoshop Touch – Stable but sadly limited range of tools compared to the desktop suite. The drawing tools are basic in comparison to Sketchbook and LayerPaint.

Clover Paint - A promising work-in-progress with a comprehensive set of tools, but a steep learning curve and bewildering UI.

TV Paint – A full desktop package, but still only in beta phase. Small icons and menus not suited to a tablet screen. Full product potentially expensive.

Overall Layer Paint is my preferred creative app for the Note 10.1, containing a core Photoshop tool set, simple interface and the allows me to transfer Photoshop work from desktop to tablet and back with ease.

My biggest complaint is that none of the apps offer brush size/opacity sliders  accessible immediately on the UI rather than via a button. I hope this frustration is ironed out with future updates.

The Note 10.1 may soon face competition as Apple, Microsoft and Wacom try to corner the mobile artist market and no doubt in the next few years we’ll finally see a fully-featured Photoshop Suite on mobile tablet. Until then, the Note 10.1 comes highly recommended!