Inspire ($4.99)
Version – 1.3
REVIEW – “A great tool to unleash your creative skills!”
At first glance this looks like just another “drawing” app and so I’ll have to admit I wasn’t all that excited about doing this review. What I found after opening it up was an exciting new way to express art using a 
touch screen! If you have ever painted using oils, you will be familiar with the way that this app works.
The main menu has four buttons: “Gallery,” “Options,” “Info,” and “Tips & Tricks.” I would recommend that you give the “Tips & Tricks” area a quick look over before you start because it will give you a good idea of how things work in this app. The Options menu in this game offers a surprising amount of customization. One of the most useful settings is that you can change the “Painting Offset” to make it easier to
see what you are painting. What this does is make the actual area that you paint slightly offset from the area of the screen that you are touching.
Once you are ready to start painting press the “Gallery” button. You will be taken to a screen with all of your previous paintings, or if you have not painted anything there will be just one blank painting. Selecting a painting will bring up a preview image and you can start painting on that image by pressing the “Paint” button in the upper right corner. This is also the screen where you can 
email the picture to yourself, to the developer, delete the picture, make a duplicate of it, or just save it in your photo album. All of these options are located at the bottom of the screen.
Once you are in paint mode you paint by touching the screen and dragging. Unless you have the “Tap Corners Only” option turned on touching the screen anywhere without dragging will bring up the menu. From here you can select the color you want to paint with, find out what a color is using the “dropper” tool, paint the entire screen any color you want, undo, redo, select a brush type and set up how that brush is used.
One of the greatest features of this 
app is just how much control you have over what your brush strokes look like and what they actually do to the painting. From the “Brush Selection” menu you can select from four different types of brushes, and you can make those brushes any size that you might want. From the “Brush Usage” menu you can control all kinds of things like the angle that you hold the brush at, how much pressure you put on the brush as you use it, how much paint you put on the brush, and various other settings.
Not only can you paint with your brushes, but you can also use the brushes 
without paint to blend other colors together. This can be used to create a variety of beautiful effects that you just can’t do any other way. The “pressure” setting really is really important when you are using this feature because it controls how much the paint will blend.
After playing with this app for several hours it is obvious how this app could easily be used to create very beautiful artwork, and without all the cleanup! If you are an amateur or aspiring artist and you would like to be able to “doodle” on your portable device whenever you want I would highly recommend Inspire. And if you are still skeptical check out their website where you can see art that has been submitted by the community, it is incredible! So what are you waiting for? Head to the App Store and let this app inspire you to create your greatest masterpiece today!
- David H.
Download Now!
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Developer – KiwiPixel
URL: http://kiwipixel.com/
DEVELOPERS NOTES
- Andy Cook (allaboutiphone.net)
“Very enjoyable painting app. The blending feature is awesome. To anyone looking for a similar to Painter painting experience on the iPhone, I strongly recommend Inspire.”
- Thierry Schiel
“It’s a little difficult at first but it is really like painting with oil you can blend with it so well I forget I’m painting on the iPhone.”
- Corliss Blakely
“I really do love how this program makes you feel like you’re actually oil painting. It’s certainly a different experience than the other iPhone apps out there.”
- James Egger
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Don’t let the limitations of other painting applications inhibit your creative potential. Try Inspire and you will quickly see that this is a painting app like no other! The key feature of Inspire is that it simulates wet paint on a canvas, allowing amazing blending effects with all four kinds of brushes.
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Brushes
- Four different kinds of paint brushes to choose from: a flat brush, round brush, fan brush and palette knife.
- Each brush comes in many different sizes to allow large, sweeping strokes as well as fine, precise strokes.
- Brushes can be loaded with different amounts of paint, including no paint at all for a dry brush.
- Varying amounts of pressure can be used with a dry brush to achieve many different kinds of blending effects.
- Brushes can be rotated a full 360 degrees to allow a variety of different strokes.
- Paint actually “breaks” as it depletes off the palette knife, allowing techniques such as layering and the creation of textures.
- The corner of the palette knife can also be used to scratch away paint off the canvas.
- The location and behavior of individual bristles are completely randomized in every way, ensuring that no two brush strokes ever look exactly the same.
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Painting
- The intuitive painting menu completely disappears when dismissed and allows fast execution of commands such as undo and redo.
- 200 levels of undo and redo are available.
- Choose any paint color quickly and easily with the natural color picker. Transparent colors can be chosen to simulate a glazing effect. Previously used colors are saved and can be selected from a grid.
- The eyedropper tool can be used to select paint colors that are already on the canvas.
- The canvas can be moved around and zoomed in and out up to 3200% to get a better view of certain areas and help with painting small, accurate strokes.
- Strokes can be painted on the canvas at a fully customizable offset location relative to where the screen is touched.
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Saving and Exporting
- Save up to 100 paintings in your gallery and easily export any painting to your Photos. Saved gallery paintings can also be deleted and duplicated.
- Paintings can be sent via email from within the application, attached as uncompressed PNG files.
- Paintings can be exported at resolutions of up to 1920 x 2880 in both PNG and JPEG formats using the free to download Inspire Exporter application available for both Windows and Mac OS X. The Inspire Exporter is fully supported on Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7.
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Send us your best paintings to have them displayed in the online gallery at KiwiPixel.com. Visit the gallery to see what people like you can do with creative potential and Inspire.
Download Now!
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