This gap left the market open for a lot of developers to fill it with amazing offerings. iPhone 3 and iPhone3S literally exploded the scene with tonnes of apps and beautiful graphics, then one more things changed the whole dynamics, "Retina Display". Graphics that were created has to be scaled to twice the size. This poses a little bit of a problem with Bitmaps or Raster art, as they do not scale very well. So the next best thing to do is use a Vector drawing app.
There are quite a few vector drawing apps available, one that we got to review for this is from MapDiva called ArtBoard. On start up the app presents the possibility to create a new Document from a template. There are quite a few templates available from Backgrounds, to Business Cards, Invitations and greeting cards and signs and fliers.
Upon selecting a document template, the UI is plain and simple, two floating windows and the main window with the list of layers on the left hand side (Photoshop has trained us otherwise). The floating windows are the Tools Palette and the Clipart Panel. There are quite a few Clipart that come with Artboard, do not think in terms of MS Office Clipart, this is a vector drawing app and had vector Clipart.
The tools available are the standard vector drawing tools, allowing lines straight, Arcs and Curves. In addition to the standard primitives, Triangle, Circle, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle and polygons there are tools for Text and text alignment and node editing.
The app is professionally polished to work well and does a good job at creating vectors and saves them in the app of your choice.
Given the variety of Clipart specially with a range of eyes, mouth and speech bubbles, if one was to create a manga series, Artboard would be so helpful in creating the same.
Creating elements are very easy with Artboard, it is a matter of double clicking on the desired style to apply it to the vector. I am no vector artist, so I cannot demonstrate a brilliantly drawn image, but having worked with Corel Draw around 1993-95 while managing a fortnightly print magazine, I can tell you that Artboard is quite very simple and has very powerful features. The main focus of ArtBoard as the name suggests is to allow creating vector art, this is a take on Illustrator or Inkscape with a similar looking interface and palette for vector objects.
Rotating an object is as simple as dragging the purple coloured handle around, the shape rotates with it. Scale the object with one of the 8 corner elements available. Setting the style is double click on the style required. Arranging the objects is a context menu attached to each object, allowing it to be send to the front/back or forward/backwards.
All the standard manipulations like intersections, clipping and extending of the shape is allowed.
SUMMARY
Software : Artboard
Version : 1.0
Publisher : MapDiva
Website : http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/
Platform : Mac OS X (10.6.6 or higher)
Demo : 30 days
Price : $19.99
Mac App Store : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/artboard/id414551588?mt=12
And we have a copy of Artboard for one lucky winner, all you need to do
1. Follow @whatsin4me
2. Retweet the message "Read reviewme.oz-apps.com, follow @whatsin4me and RT this msg. You might win a copy of #Artboard from #MapDiva"
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