
Paper - mynameisraj
http://www.fiftythree.com/paper
======
nullflux
I really want to love this. iPad hardware just doesn't deliver.

The problem isn't that nice drawing software like this doesn't exist, it's
that styli on iPad still _suck_. The capacitive screen (even on "new" iPad)
only has about a 6mm capacitive resolution, so you're stuck fudging the fck
along with a sausage for a stylus. Ars had a good review[1] on the current
state of styli, and they said much the same. I've personally owned about four
iPad styli and none come close to what I am capable of with an old Graphire.

We need pressure sensitivity, finer resolution, and proper calibration for
this to work well. Everyone wants to replace drawing stuff with iPad
(including myself) but until iPad supports Wacom-esque pressure sensitivity,
feel and resolution on iPad everything you do there will likely be too rough
compared to what you could get with a Bamboo on Painter/Illustrator or what
could be drawn directly on paper, scanned in and retraced with said Wacom.
Even the Galaxy Note / Lenovo Tablet / etc. are better for this.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2012/03/does-the-
stylus...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2012/03/does-the-stylus-still-
blow-it-on-the-new-ipad.ars)

~~~
jacobolus
Has anyone tried one of these? <http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/>

It looks like a somewhat different design than all the other styluses, and so
might work better, but I haven’t seen any direct reviews except their
marketing material, which is hardly impartial.

~~~
philwebster
While looking for a precise stylus I came across this one as well:
<http://www.cregle.com/> It looks like it solves a lot of the gripes with
normal capacitive styluses, but I haven't tried it.

~~~
nullflux
This is the same hardware as the XO stylus in a different case. Same OEM for
both. They look great, the demos are wonderful, but user reviews say that they
don't work well in the upper third of the screen and require frequent
recalibration.

~~~
philwebster
Interesting, I hadn't seen the XO before. It's too bad these ultrasonic
styluses don't live up to the hype. I would love to take notes on a new iPad
and ditch the paper notebooks completely. It'd be sweet if Apple shipped a
solution, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

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epaga
Just downloaded it and gave it a spin with my Bamboo stylus. Here are my
impressions, FWIW:

* First impression: Nice tutorial, nice animations when picking a notebook. Great idea to do your app planning sketches as its own notebook.

* First impression while writing: Nice inky strokes, I like the colors.

* Second impression: Hmmm...this seems a bit laggy compared to Noteshelf or Penultimate. <flip over to those programs> Yup, definitely laggier (I have an iPad 2). Probably only a few milliseconds lag, but noticeable.

* Third impression: I like the rewind interface instead of an undo button. Very cool.

* Fourth impression: No zoom or magnifying glass? bummer.

* Final decision: Nice, impressive, innovative UI but unfortunately especially the lagginess will cause this to not replace Noteshelf as my default go-to notebook. The lack of zoom is also a bummer, since with a magnifying glass you could add so much more detail, it makes up for the iPad's lack of pinpoint accuracy.

3.5/5 (edit: just realized i'm not on the app store so I can give decimal
ratings :P)

P.S. Also, a "hand guard" area to ignore touches as in Noteshelf would REALLY
be nice to be able to draw without having to make sure you never touch the
screen with your hand while drawing.

~~~
rdw
I had incredible difficulty with the rewind/undo interface. Almost as often as
I bring up the rewind UI, it'll do some other action instead, like drawing
little dots, or zooming in/out, or bringing up/dismissing the tools palette.

When the dialog is finally brought up, it doesn't respect my finger motions.
I'll drag my one finger a full 360 around my other finger but the pie chart
moves less than 5 degrees in total, jerkily. Or, it flaps forward and backward
rapidly as I smoothly move my finger in one direction. Maybe there's a
heuristic that's trying to pick a "pivot" finger and a "rotating" finger, and
it's picking wrong each time. I dunno.

Willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because the rest of the app is
so well done, but, this brokenness of such a key feature makes a bad initial
impression.

~~~
julianwa
It sounds as if you're rotating one finger around the other? The idea is to
use two fingers together (like one big finger) to do a pan in a circular
motion.

~~~
rdw
In all my messing around it did not occur to me to try that. Thanks! Solution
blinders in action! I suppose a little animation would have gone a long way
towards clearing that up initially.

Even doing it correctly, I still feel it's a little too slow, and still
relatively easy to flub it into closing the book. I applaud the idea, though.

~~~
robgough
I had exactly the same problem - I agree that a little animation would go a
long way here.

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philwelch
I couldn't tell at first if this was an app or just a sarcastic advertisement
for actual paper as an alternative to tablets. Maybe that doesn't say much for
my powers of observation, but it's also a testament to the product. At first
glance, a white iPad running this app is not unlike a pad of drawing paper.
Good job.

~~~
rogerbinns
I still can't tell what the heck the product actually is. Is it a new tablet?
A remanufactured iPad? Some sort of stylus. Some sort of app? Something
offered by Tumblr?

~~~
schiffern
It's a drawing app for iPad.

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kmfrk
The app looks really, really cool, but I think this input lag demonstration by
Microsoft has really spoilt me in the same way that I can no longer look at
mobile devices without Retina and not cringe.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4>

~~~
reedlaw
What are the chances that real hardware response will get down to the 1ms
range in the near future? I'm thinking that each interface, from the touch pad
to the CPU to the display, will introduce significant lag.

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commieneko
Bought this this morning. I'm a figurative artist, for over 30 years, and this
is a very nice tool. Especially for a version 1.0. The stroke dynamics are
very good, and I'm running this on a first generation iPad. I've been
sketching with it off and on all day, and have really grown to like it.

Things it needs:

* Pinch zoom in and out. Gotta have this. It works great when you are drawing at the scale of the whole page, but detail work suffers as the sampling of the device isn't good enough. (Nor are my fingers! This is why artists and illustrators often draw and paint as large as possible.) When they add zooming, and they say on their website they are, they need to be sure and adjust the tool's scaling to match the view.

* The limited color palette is fine, but I need to be able to pick the colors.

* More tools are a given, especially since the program itself is free and they are making their money by selling extra tools. I've already plunked down my eight bucks for all that's available.

The minimalist interface is fantastic. When you are drawing, and I'm speaking
as a person who draws observationally, you want the tool to be as spacial and
object oriented as possible. This doesn't mean you have to mimic "real world"
drawing tools, but it _does_ mean that the interface needs to not emphasize
numerics and linguistics. The organization needs to be _very_ simple; from a
drawing point of view, if I have to drill down through a series of hierarchies
I might has well type in menu selections from a command line. My attention
needs to be on my subject and my drawing, not on a UI.

YMMV.

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melvinng
So if Wacom starts supporting iPad with styluses, will you guys repurchase
another iPad if you already had one?

~~~
ghshephard
In a heartbeat. A decent pressure sensitive iPad/droid/windows tablet for
<$1000 would get my business tomorrow.

~~~
covalence
Isn't the Samsung Slate 7 around 1k and uses a Wacom digitizer?

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boxein
$2 per tool? This is not a free app, this is a bait-and-switch. Just charge
$15 for the app, guys.

~~~
ianthehenry
If they had gone with the traditional free lite version / paid premium version
model, you would lose all of your drawings when you upgraded. This is just a
free trial for the real product which can be unlocked at any time with minimal
friction. Personally, I prefer this to having to hunt in the app store for the
"premium" version if I decide to make the switch.

Doing this also gives the developers the option to introduce paid updates in
the future, which is potentially good or bad.

~~~
rbarooah
As of iOS5, free and paid versions of apps (or any apps by the same developer)
can share data, so the issue of losing data when upgrading has been solved.

There is also no reason the developer can't link to the paid version direct
from the app - no heed for hunting.

I don't mind them charging in-app for features in principle. but I found that
the free version wasn't enough for me to draw anything serious so it didn't
really let me try out the app.

I think it would have been better to go with a fully featured free version
with say, just one notebook with limited pages. That way users could use the
app fully, and upgrade if they used it enough to need more capacity.

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tjbarbour
PIXAR animator @MR_Scribbles toying with it
<http://shfp.tumblr.com/tagged/MadeWithPaper>

~~~
tjbarbour
And all of tumblr 'paper'ing <http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/madewithpaper>

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sycren
It looks really nice and well designed.

I really want to see a MacOSX version of this, there are not really any good
minimalistic drawing programs on the Mac app store yet..

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rdl
I'm curious about the bluetooth 4.0 LE pressure-sensitive stylus
(<http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/03/blue-tiger-stylus/>); I've started to get
really excited about 4.0 LE for electronic leash and other applications.

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phmagic
I actually don't like the rewind interface. It is an innovative way to use
circular gestures, but it was frustrating to use. I'd rather have a circular
context menu.

I do like the moleskin feel to it and the graphics. Good work!

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calibwam
How come the "nice designed" web sites is always the same, with the same font,
large images, and soooo long to scroll. It's like a statement saying "we mind
about design, we just don't have any creativity."

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TimPC
It seems to me the problem for detailed drawing is more of a hardware than a
software problem at this point. It's very solvable on both sides it's a matter
of timing the solution to hit the market when the major players in the pad
space get to the right level of support for detailed styluses.

Clever alternative input methods to take an end run around screen resolution
would be amazing if they're accurate enough.

I'd love to see someone give paper this 1 paper-cut.

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BklynJay
It looks amazing and hats-off to the developers, but ultimately an app like
this is limited by the lack of pressure response.

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EliRivers
Follow the link, watch the video that pops up... some guy walking around
fiddling with a tablet. What's being sold here? The tablet? Some software?
Services? No idea... watch for thirty seconds... still no idea... click the
"about" button... more pictures of someone's shoes. Maybe they're selling
shoes.

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smackfu
(Business hat) I wonder what would prompt someone to make yet another drawing
app for the iPad? It's a fairly full space with entries from the major
players, and the market of skilled artists is fairly small and is never going
to blow up into a #1 hit.

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shashashasha
I haven't played with this yet, but have to say the video splash on
<http://www.fiftythree.com/> 's homepage is awesome. So much more effective
than some LaunchRock splash photo.

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le_isms
Wow, this has the best paper-flipping ui I've ever seen, kudos!

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csteinbe
This app is being reviewed / hyped by every MacBook/ iOS site. No matter how
good the UI is, they have pulled off a massive PR coup. How did they do it?

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egypturnash
This looks really, really nice. Gorgeous UI.

But I kinda consider the ability to choose my own colors to be a critical
feature in my drawing programs! BALEETED

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mrtron
First time I have thought:

"I am going to get a stylus for my iPad."

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dybber
Is it limited to 9 colors or is it just me that can't figure out the right
gesture? It also seems to lack a setting for brush size.

~~~
greggman
I noticed that too but then I kind of felt like that's the point. Simple. Kind
of like having a box of 9 crayons instead of a box if 200.

The more options they give you the more time spent use them instead of
drawing?

At the same time though, I do wonder if the sketchbook UI is really the main
point. Going through images 1 at a time or with a grid of thumbnails in Art
Rage or Sketchbook is much more cumbersome than this one pinch to fold, flip
to next page, tap, draw.

It doesn't ask you to load or save, it just acts like paper which is quicker.

I wonder of those other apps added that type of feature if the limited options
would still be a positive or a negative.

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Typus
It's funny how much more interesting drawing and writing become when you can
do it electronically.

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emehrkay
The zoomed out view reminds me of the microsoft courier. Why hasnt anyone made
that into an app?

~~~
emehrkay
Oh [http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/29/2909537/paper-drawing-
ipad...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/29/2909537/paper-drawing-ipad-app-
fiftythree-brains-behind-courier)

and again

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X41qLxp4QhE>

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seshagiric
I don't have an iPad but I can still appreciate the fact they will support
using a stylus.

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dwilber
This looks really great.

Makes me wonder if its time to actually pick up a stylus...

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kristenlee
Great app, guys. I love the design of the app and your website. Really fits
the whole artistic New York hippie vibe. Keep up the good work and ignore the
inevitable onslaught of negativity you read here...its par for course lately.

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joelrunyon
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to learn to draw.

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mathnode
mmm looks delicious. I have been an avid user of the Sketchbook Pro way-of-
things since Studio Paint. I have ordered a stylus to try this on my
girlfriends iPad.

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Shpigford
What stylus are they using in their promo video?

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Criztoph
LOVE the rewind feature - nice work guys

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yogrish
UI is really Awesome. Good Job Guys.

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karolisd
How do I go back to the main menu?

~~~
gfosco
Pinch.

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wsxiaoys
Is there an android version?

~~~
turing
Unfortunately no. In an interview with The Verge one of the developers said
that they were open to the idea of moving to new platforms, but that their
resources were too tight for the time being. Imagine this on a future version
of the Galaxy Note. Perfect application for the increased fidelity of the Note
stylus.

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ariannasimpson
Beautiful design!

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LinaLauneBaer
Very well done guys! The UI is top notch.

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georgieporgie
Great intro video. It really explained the app well and was in no way
irritating (a rare feat for demo videos!).

