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.
Finger Paint ($1) is a very simple drawing app for the iPhone and iPod touch. As the name would suggest, it attempts to provide a finger paint-like experience, and for the most part succeeds.
Once the splash screen disappears, users are presented with a black canvas on which to paint and a row of four buttons at the bottom. A palette button allows the user to pick the color from 64 swatches, a large red “X” allows the user to erase the image (after confirming with a warning dialog), a dot representing the current brush brings up sliders to adjust the opacity and size of the brush, and a gears button brings up an options screen where users may, again, adjust the opacity, brush size, and color (RGB) using sliders. Below these lie buttons for saving the image, loading a picture from the user’s library, and dismissing the screen.
Users are also brought to the options screen by tapping the “More colors” button on the color selection screen.
Painting is straightforward and relatively accurate; the app doesn’t provide any option for smoothing out the lines, and there is no undo function, either. Still, Finger Paint is priced affordably, and offers more functionality than Blackboard while coming close to matching that app’s simplicity. It obviously can’t compete with the same-priced Paint on features, and it could use some polish, but users (or parents) looking for a simple drawing application could do a lot worse.
