This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Every Drawing Application, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Brushes – iPhone Edition ($5) is a fairly well-rounded drawing application, featuring a built-in gallery and offering users control over the size, texture, and color of the lines being drawn.
The application opens to the Gallery screen, with thumbnails of each of the user’s past drawings, along with a button to import an image from the iPhone or iPod touch’s photo library, and another button to create a new drawing. Tapping on an existing drawing lets users view it on the full screen, with buttons for editing the drawing, duplicating it or saving it to the photo library, deleting the drawing, and controls for the built-in slideshow feature.
In edit mode, Brushes offers a button along the bottom of the screen for filling the drawing with a particular color, a brush button to let the user choose from three different brush textures and adjust the size, plus undo/redo buttons, an eyedropper button for selecting a color, and a color box which shows the currently selected color and brings up a color selection screen.
This screen includes a circular main color selector and sliders for adjusting the tint and opacity of the color. All of these buttons are hidden when the user is drawing; users can also use pinch and grab gestures to zoom in and out, with the zoom percentage displayed in an overlay.
Although it lacks a wide variety of tools, Brushes is well thought out and offers one of the best interfaces of any iPhone OS drawing app.
