As rumors of a possible
third-generation iPad announcement draw closer, consumers aren’t the only ones buzzing with excitement. Developers are also busy working on updates of their apps for the new features. KiwiPixel, makers of the artist app
Inspire Pro talked with AppAdvice about what they are doing to prepare for Apple’s newest tablet.
Inspire Pro is a realistic painting app for the iPad that is famous for its highly defined brush stroke emulator and multitude of color options. Users can set the paint load, the size of the brush, the angle that it touches the canvas and how much pressure is applied to each stroke. Artists can even apply the dry brush feature for blending colors.
With the rumors of Retina display and an A6 processor in the
upcoming iPad 3, KiwiPixel is hard at work redesigning Inspire Pro to get it ready for the release of the new tablet.
To support the increased screen resolution, KiwiPixel will replace all of their artwork with higher resolution images that are exactly double the size, including buttons and hotspot icons, background textures, frames around the paintings and widgets. This upgrade is, “an absolute must to maintain the visual appeal of our UI and provide laser-sharp graphics for our customers to interact with,” said KiwiPixel's Marketing Coordinator.
KiwiPixel will also increase the size of the two included canvas options to meet the higher resolution. The default canvas size will be 2048x1536 and the square canvas will be 2048x2048. The increased resolution will allow users to create much more detailed work, but takes a lot more memory. The developers are hoping for double the RAM and a much faster CPU than the iPad 2. “If the performance with the new canvas size is noticeably slower, we'll have to be creative and do some tricks and optimizations to get the speed back up,” said KiwiPixel's Marketing Coordinator.
The brushes will also need an upgrade to support the increased resolution. The developers are working on an increase to the number of bristles on each brush and to alter the bristle density. These changes will also have an effect on speed due to the need for more memory. “The beauty is though that the larger brushes and canvas size will be displayed at the same size to your eye because the iPad screen is not physically changing in size,” said KiwiPixel's Marketing Coordinator.
The KiwiPixel team is keeping their fingers crossed for the rumored A6 quad core processor, instead of the
A5x dual-core for the iPad 3. The way the current version creates paint strokes is by using one core to track where the user’s finger moves on the screen while the other core calculates the data to simulate the painting and blending that appears on the canvas. If the iPad 3 were to include the quad-core processor, they could split up the work of calculating and rendering brush strokes into the additional cores to be processed simultaneously. This could yield a performance increase of up to three times what it is now.
“In the end, we are very excited about the possibilities that the iPad 3 will bring to enhance the painting experience of Inspire Pro and ultimately take our unsurpassed painting and blending engine to the next level.”
The update to Inspire Pro will be free to users that already have it. The price of the app will remain at $7.99. KiwiPixel does not have an official release date for the update, but plan to make it available soon after the iPad 3 is released.
The company recently released a free version of their iPhone/iPod touch app, Inspire that can be
downloaded from the App Store today.
AppAdvice has teamed up with KiwiPixel to offer our readers a chance to win a copy of Inspire Pro for the iPad, and
Inspire for the iPhone/iPod touch. Just leave a comment below for a chance to win. Be sure to include if you want the iPad version or the iPhone/iPod touch version. If you don’t specify, I will assume the latter. Contest ends Feb. 28 at 11:59 p.m. CST.
