Apple’s new Apple Pencil Professional has two new options that make it a must have for artists — however is it sufficient to dethrone Wacom?
Through the Could Apple Event, Apple introduced its new iPad Air and iPad Pro lineup. I believed they had been fairly cool, however I wasn’t instantly compelled to select one up.
After which, they launched the Apple Pencil Professional. That attacked my resolve a bit extra.
I used to be speaking to Mike after the occasion, and I offhandedly talked about that now, with the addition of Barrel Roll and Squeeze, Apple has made a big leap in closing the hole between the iPad and a standard graphics pill — and I stand by it.
These two comparatively minor options aren’t an enormous deal to the common iPad person. To customers like Mike, who may as nicely use a scorching canine as a stylus for all of his creative intent and skill, they make no distinction in any respect.
To creatives who primarily work on the iPad, they’re enormous.
The Apple Pencil Professional options
At the moment, Apple has 4 separate Apple Pencil fashions. It is a lot, but it surely’s solely momentary as Lightning is on the best way out sooner relatively than later. In the event you’re undecided what the variations are, I recommend testing the exhaustive buyer’s guide we printed just lately.
The Apple Pencil Professional, which was simply introduced, is most just like the second era Apple Pencil. It has a handful of latest options that make it worthy of the “professional” advertising time period.
Barrel Roll permits customers to twist the Apple Pencil Professional to rotate formed brushes. It is a characteristic that’s a lot beloved by artists, and apparently sufficient, would not exist on a few of the comparable Wacom merchandise, particularly the Wacom One lineup.
Once more, to the common person, it won’t appear important. Nevertheless it’s an enormous deal for those who transfer between conventional and digital media. In spite of everything, conventional pencil artists will spend hours prepping their pencils, submitting them to be particular shapes, solely so that they have the choice to rotate them to attain totally different line widths and shapes.
The addition of Squeeze is nice, too. I really like the concept of compressing my Apple Pencil to open up a contextual menu — it is undoubtedly going to be an enormous time saver for individuals who use it.
Through the occasion, the builders behind Procreate confirmed how squeeze can be utilized to pop open a menu that allowed them to swap between a brush instrument and eraser, flip the canvas horizontally, and extra. This prevents customers from needing to navigate round their iPad to search out actions that might usually be hidden in menus.
A 3rd characteristic, Haptic Suggestions, can be actually neat. Procreate confirmed an artist utilizing it to inform when a digital component had been completely snapped within the heart of one other. Whereas this appears small, it is one other little characteristic that’s designed to seamlessly combine into an artists workflow and save time.
Nevertheless it’s value asking, “Is that this sufficient to warrant spending the cash to improve?” And this goes doubly so for those who already personal a Wacom pill.
I wish to begin by saying this is not a “let’s evaluate apples to apples” type of comparability. A Wacom pill and an iPad are two wildly totally different merchandise that simply occur to have some overlap. A automobile and a grocery cart have 4 wheels, however you’ll be able to’t swap them interchangeably, even when they will carry your groceries from level A to level B.
Nonetheless, I’ll attempt my greatest to focus on the place every product shines and the place every product falls brief.
For the sake of this breakdown, I will assume that you’re a artistic seeking to buy both a Wacom product with a display or a brand new iPad able to supporting the Apple Pencil Professional.
Most individuals’s intestine response to choosing two merchandise is, “Which is cheaper?” or “Which provides me extra bang for my buck?” And that is not notably simple to do between an iPad and a Wacom product — purely as a result of they’re solely considerably comparable merchandise, to start with.
Let’s get this out of the best way first — shopping for an iPad shouldn’t be low-cost. That is very true if you have to improve to one of many just lately launched iPads after which buy the Apple Pencil Professional.
Nonetheless, at base value with no trade-in, you’ll be able to snag an 11-inch iPad Air and an Apple Pencil Professional for $728. If you would like slightly further display actual property, you’ll be able to snag the 13-inch iPad Air and Apple Pencil Professional for $928.
After all, if you need an iPad Professional, you may be paying a big quantity extra. However let’s simply assume you are not trying that far but.
The Wacom One 12, Wacom’s entry-level 11.6-inch “pen show,” prices $309.95 however requires you to buy a pen and cable, bringing the fee to only about $356.
The Wacom One 13 Touch is the following measurement up, provides contact options, and prices $599. It is nonetheless cheaper than even the base-level 11-inch iPad Air.
The Wacom One lineup, whereas good, is not good. As somebody who has owned a number of Wacom One merchandise, I can personally say that they are getting higher, however I do not discover myself reaching for them the best way I do my iPad.
However, it does get higher — and worse, type of. Wacom One is not the one pill show Wacom makes, both. And this is the place the road for value between the brand new iPads and Wacom tablets begins to blur.
If you wish to bump as much as the Wacom Cintiq 16, which options greater stress ranges, a built-in stand, and total higher construct high quality than the Wacom One line, you may should fork over $799.95. In the event you had been lifeless set on shopping for a Wacom pill, this is able to be the one I’d recommend. Brian Patterson, AppleInsider’s different resident artwork nerd, would also have to agree.
I’ve used Cintiqs. They’re well worth the funding.
After all, these are “pen shows,” which additionally assumes you could have a pc of some type and at further expense to deal with no matter artwork program you want. Wacom pen shows have to be bodily related to a pc to work — an iPad doesn’t have that problem.
Wacom does have an answer for that, although — the Wacom MobileStudio Professional 16.
That is an all-in-one cellular pc that permits you to run all of the (Home windows 10-compatible) main software program proper from the system — no auxiliary pc required. It has Home windows 10 Skilled, an Intel Core i7, Nvidia Quatro P1000, and 16GB of RAM.
After all, it weighs almost 5 kilos, is capped at 512GB storage, and prices $2,499.95.
An M4 iPad Professional with nano-texture glass, 2TB of storage, and an Apple Pencil Professional solely prices $2,528 — $79 extra.
So, once more, value is not the place it’s best to begin trying, however it’s value noting it in your head.
The iPad wins. That is it. Okay, I do know I am unable to be that succinct about it.
I have never gotten my palms on a elaborate new iPad this cycle, however I do have a 2020 iPad Air that I am keen on. I am most likely the least loyalist to Apple out of everybody on the AppleInsider workers — it is hardly a secret that I am comparatively new to macOS and considerably of a Luddite in terms of smartphones.
However I’m unapologetically crew iPad — and an enormous motive for that’s its portability.
I’ve a number of baggage my iPad can slot in, ought to I wish to tote it round city from espresso store to espresso store. It barely weighs something, and it is simply as completely happy to maintain me firm on my desk as it’s on the sofa or mattress. I don’t go away for a visit with out my iPad — that may be unthinkable.
As said above, the Wacom One and Wacom Cintiq require you to plug into a pc for them to work. In the event you’ve received a laptop computer, it is not ultimate, however it’s doable. Nonetheless, for those who’ve solely received a desktop, you are out of luck.
And for those who snag a kind of fancy $2,500 Wacom MobileStudio Execs, it weighs 5 kilos. My iPad Air weighs 1.01 lbs, and my MacBook Air weighs 2.8 lbs — which means that when mixed, two of my gadgets weigh lower than the one Wacom system.
At no level have I felt hindered by my iPad Air, and for those who’re a artistic who likes to work in many various areas, that is a reasonably large deal.
This class might be a very powerful one and the place the 2 gadgets differ essentially the most. That is the place you need to be considering long-term.
Concerning software program amount, I actually consider that — at the least at this second — Wacom edges out the iPad by a bit. There are such a lot of unimaginable desktop artwork packages, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Rebelle, Blender, Maya, Krita, Corel Painter, Clip Studio Paint — the checklist goes on and on.
And, for those who’re an individual who works in a artistic business, likelihood is you may most likely be anticipated to work with quite a lot of desktop packages. That may very well be an enormous motive you resolve to stay with Wacom.
Or possibly you already personal a good quantity of those packages and are uncertain whether or not you are able to leap into the Apple ecosystem or improve to a more recent Wacom product.
That is not to say the iPad would not have unimaginable artwork functions. It does. In actual fact, I would argue that it has among the best artwork apps on the market: Procreate.
Numerous artists completely use Procreate. It is a light-weight program, prices $13, is extremely intuitive to make use of, and has so many improbable add-ons out there for it. My tattoo artist and I joke that when you could have Procreate, you get a secondary pastime — shopping for far more Procreate brush packs than you may ever be capable to use.
And Procreate is not the one app killing it on iPad, both. Whereas it could have had a tough begin initially, Adobe has genuinely stepped as much as make Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator work nice on the iPad — and Fresco appears to be higher each time I exploit it.
Do not like the concept of paying a subscription payment? Affinity’s Picture and Designer for iPad are actually good, too.
I have never personally used Shapr3D, however I’ve seen many individuals make some cool issues with it.
And, if we’re being trustworthy, regardless that I’m on crew iPad, it would not embody 100% of my workflow, both. I desire utilizing my iPad in terms of digital portray. I am nonetheless an old-school holdout in terms of picture enhancing — I do that every one on my iMac with Photoshop, although I do not use a graphics pill in my picture enhancing.
When selecting, you have to take into consideration what software program you’ll spend most of your time with.
Which is the precise alternative? That is as much as you.
In the end, no matter you select goes to return down to non-public desire. Each are nice merchandise. Each can match fairly seamlessly into a mean artistic’s toolkit.
In the event you’re an impartial or hobbyist artist, I would advocate an M2 iPad Air and Apple Pencil Professional. It takes up about as a lot area as a sketchbook, and throwing it in a bag simply in case inspiration strikes is improbable.
Plus, it nonetheless has all of the options of an iPad. You need to use Messages, browse the net, and waste a bunch of time on Discord or YouTube. And with Delta, it is also a strong retro gaming platform, too.
If you will get your palms on a buddy’s iPad and a brand new Apple Pencil Professional, I implore you to attempt it out to see the way you prefer it.
In the event you’re a scholar — or potential scholar — who plans on working in knowledgeable business in some capability, I would ask somebody in that business what they recommend.
And for those who’re an business oldhead sitting on a plethora of desktop-based software program and a slick Wacom Cintiq, you most likely can simply stick together with your Cintiq — however odds are you already knew that.