Paintstorm Studio

I had a play with the Lite version and was really impressed. I’m very happy to support this with the paid version; you are doing a great job with this app. I’ve tried many painting apps and this rates with the best. Love the mixing palette. The interface is very customisable; worth spending some time tune it for yourself as there are so many options and settings.

I have been using paint programs for almost 20 years (with Wacom tablets on a Mac) and I was super excited about the iPad pro with its pressure sensitive pen after I was a bit disappointed by the Surface Pro 3. And even though Procreate and sketchbook pro are wonderful apps that I used on the iPad 4 but with the Pro I didn't feel a big advantage and they were a bit too simple for my needs. Just as I was getting ready to sell off my iPad Pro I stumbled upon Paintstorm and I am blown away. It is incredibly professional and has endless ways to be adapted to your needs. Not only the tools have an astounding level of customization, the UI itself can be tweaked to the smallest detail. The brush engine is wonderful. I did have one gripe with the canvas rotation tool, I wished I could rotate directly with my fingers. I wrote the developer a few weeks ago and he promptly replied why he implemented the rotation in his way which I understood. But now he has added the option in the latest update! I can't describe how how happy I am with this app. It has made me love my iPad Pro and I am definitely going to keep it. It's a dream come true. Sorry for all the expletives, but I have been looking for something like this for 2 decades :)

There’s a couple of bugs, the recent update broke the brush import features and you can only use reference images if you open a separate document. Please fix this.

If the UI were cleaned up, this would awesome.

Paintstorm has a definite place in my production cycle as a professional creative and might be my “go to” for starting new projects. Serious artists, don’t skip this one.

I do love this program. It’s got great painterly brushes that most of us really want without the big prices like Corel Painter. It’s pretty budget friendly. Granted it being cheaper it does have some bugs and the interface is a bit odd. The Reference Window bugs me so much though. I guess you could technically have the photos app open on the side. You can’t import images directly into the sub window like in Clip Studio Paint, Ibis Paint X, and Procreate. I have tried almost all painting apps in my experiences of 12 years of art and 3D art. Most drawing apps in fact have that function of sub reference window image import. This one is just not ideal, you have to open a separate document and toggle it to the reference window, that’s my only issue. If they fixed that with direct image import into the reference window, but overall it is a good app. And it has canvas texture templates which most don’t have, which is a double plus.

At its core, I’m incredibly impressed. It is the most desktop-like app I’ve worked with outside of a traditional computer environment. I’m running this on a 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 and the larger screen is much needed for all that’s going on with the interface. The good: The paint simulation is as good as anything else out there, including ArtRage, in my opinion. The amount of customization that can be done with the interface is superb. A lot of companies could learn from this design. Creating new documents with canvas textures is a breeze and looks great. Customization of brushes is, again, staggeringly good. There’s almost nothing you can’t change to your liking. The bad: Forget about working at high resolution. The app cannot handle anything beyond mid-rez sizes. At high resolutions, the app slows down to be completely unusable. Even at mid-size resolutions, once the brush gets large, it lags to the point of being unworkable. The app crashes more than any other app I’ve worked with. The interface freezes sometimes and other times certain functions cease to work without a complete restart. Despite the amazingly detailed interface, there are a lot of things that are pretty clunky. Working with a reference image in a separate panel, for example, is so convoluted. I don’t know why I can’t just pull in an image from my photo library like ArtRage. There have been very few recent updates and none over the past few years have addressed the serious lag while using bigger brushes. That leads me to believe it will not be addressed in software. Maybe the M1 and M2 iPads are not having the slowdown problem. With all of these negatives, I still love the app. If the lag issues could be resolved, it would be almost perfect. UPDATE: After using this app for a few weeks, I have decided to abandon it. While it has some amazing functionality, the crashes and bugs and sluggishness is way too anxiety-inducing.

First, let me say that I love this app. The interface and number of options are unique and fun to use. The only complaint I have at the moment is the brush lag, where the brush stroke comes behind where the Apple Pencil is on the screen. If this is fixed, I will likely give a five star rating. I don’t think I have seen any updates for this app in a couple of years, at least. Which is a shame, because it is a great app.

paintstorm is awesome, lightweight and worth trying even if you use procreate. i have both and i very much prefer paintstorm.

The speed the brush strokes get put on is not good. To much lag,but will still work with it anyway since this program runs my Bob Ross painting course.