by In the months since its March release, FiftyThree’s Paper has become my go-to sketching app for doodling, planning, or quick drawings. I’ve used it to design my new apartment, create a few Twitter avatars, and sketch away a few Saturday afternoons. But the first iteration of Paper, as beautiful as it was, had its flaws: fixed brush sizes, limited color palettes, and no zoom. Wednesday’s 1.2.1 update, which brings both color mixing and support for the Pogo Connect pressure-sensitive Bluetooth stylus, doesn’t fix every problem I have—there’s still no way to enlarge the canvas—but it’s a wonderful step forward. I took the update for a brief whirl, using the Pogo Connect as my chief drawing implement.
First things first: Though this update does give you several color palettes to choose from—including, thank goodness, several shades of skin tone—you’ll need to pay an additional $2 if you want unlimited color choice. Along with the various brushes you can purchase, this brings the total cost for Paper to $9, which I think is more than fair for what the app can do.
Tap Mixer’s white circle to get traditional color picking tools.
And what a color tool Paper has brought forth. Mixer is both a color picker and a palette mixer: You can either tap the white circle inside the Mixer to bring up sliders that allow you to pick the right color shade, or you can rely on old-school color mixing to get what you want. Pick an initial color from the palette view and swirl the white circle clockwise until the color takes up the entirety of the black circle, then pick a secondary color and swirl the white circle counter clockwise (as if you were mixing it into the circle). Your initial color will change into the second color, giving you all the hues in-between to pick from. You can even go back and forth—clockwise and counter-clockwise—to see the full range between colors.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
