The all-new Apple iPad Pro is a powerful tablet. Combined with the Apple Pencil, it can be a great tool to bring out your best creativity.
However, you need the best apps for iPad Pro with Apple Pencil support to make the best use of your creative abilities.
Apple Pencil with its tilt support and high-end pressure sensitivity really enhances the way you can turn a blank canvas into a masterpiece.
For that, you’ll need an app or two on your iPad.
Here, we are going to talk about the best apps for iPad Pro 2022 with pencil support.
Let’s get started.
Best Apps for iPad Pro 2022
Adobe Illustrator Draw
While Affinity Designer is a great option, it’s expensive. If you don’t have an extensive budget for a drawing app, then consider Adobe Creative Cloud. You can make great use of your Apple Pencil using Adobe Illustrator Draw.
It allows you to use customizable brushes, ready to cater to your designing, drawing, and styling needs. It offers a wide range of stencils as well. You can use them for drawing circles, squares, curves, polygons, and more. To create amazing effects, you can blend your photos with your drawings in Adobe Illustrator Draw. Its usability is not limited as it enables you to draw canvases of up to 8K resolution.
For just $2 a month, you can make great use of Adobe Creative Cloud.
Adobe Photoshop Sketch
For those keenly into traditional drawing and sketching, Adobe Photoshop Sketch is a great way to use your Apple Pencil.
You get access to 24 built-in brushes that can be customized based on your color, size, and blending needs. Just like Adobe Illustrator Draw, Adobe Photoshop Sketch also allows you to mix photos with your drawing. It can also create canvases of up to 8K resolution.
You can automatically save your work on Adobe Creative Cloud. However, you can have 20GB of extra storage at the expense of just $2/month.
Sketch Club
Sketch Club is another useful app to have on your iPad Pro so you can make great use of your Apple Pencil. It’s a relatively less pricey option than other drawing apps. However, it offers a wide range of features you’d want as a beginner or professional.
It offers a wide range of brushes for blurring, filling, smudging, text, and more. You’ll find tons of shape tools as well. It goes a step ahead of other competing apps and can create canvases of up to 16K resolution and 300 DPI prints.
One of the standout features is the integrated community of Sketch Club. It offers a lot of value to thrive as a digital artist.
Paper by WeTransfer
If you’re looking for a free iPad Pro app to use your Apple Pencil, Paper by WeTransfer is a good option. With this app, you can use your Apple Pencil to create sketches and notes. Although it offers a range of tools, it’s easy to use.
It offers six basic tools in its free version. If you opt for a premium subscription, you get access to advanced tools. Paper gives you a lot of creative options, allowing you to add photos to a drawing and perform digital art without creating complicated layers.
If you’re not sure about it, opt for its free subscription.
Procreate
You can’t go wrong with Procreate if you need to get the maximum out of your Apple Pencil. It’s one of the best apps for iPad Pro to let your Apple Pencil shine. Procreate is a powerful app to use for sketching, illustration, and painting. It’s designed to work flawlessly.
This app gives you access to advanced tools such as dual-texture brushes, responsive smudging tools, etc. It will ensure that you can create a masterpiece. Procreate lets you create your own tools as well.
It supports multiple formats with PSD as its native format. You can create timelapse replays of your work on Procreate.
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Adobe Comp CC
If you’re a UX designer, Adobe Comp CC is what you need to have maximum benefits from your Apple Pencil. It’s an iPad Pro app to use with Apple Pencil so you can create wireframe mockups. Adobe Comp CC seems like a mini version of InDesign CC. You won’t find all the features of InDesign CC in it, but the core tools are there for you.
It features a variety of preset layouts while allowing you to create customized dimensions as well. Your work is automatically saved on your Creative Cloud account, which lets you access your work across other devices as well.
Concepts
For those just starting their journey as digital artists, Concepts is one of the best apps for iPad Pro with Apple Pencil. It offers all the basic tools you need for drawing work.
Its intuitive interface makes it even easier for beginners. Its free tools include brush wheels, grids, measurement tools, and more.
Once you get a hang of the app and its basic tools, you can purchase advanced tools as well. One of its standout features is that it has support for HTML color codes.
Notepad+ Pro
When it comes to taking notes with your Apple Pencil on your iPad, there’s no better app than Notepad+ Pro. What makes this app stand out is that you can annotate your PDFs, take notes, and draw art in this app, making it a complete package.
It supports a wide variety of file formats including Excel, Keynote, PowerPoint, Word, and more. There are several templates available so you can create files without putting yourself under a lot of work.
Bear
If all you need from your app is note-taking experience, then Bear is a good option. You can use it with your Apple Pencil to take high-quality notes with ease. Probably, the most notable part of Bear is the variety of themes available in this app.
You can draw art, create sketches, and take notes using this iPad app with your Apple Pencil. You can assign custom icon tags to your files and make it easier to find them. It takes its customization feature a step ahead by offering a feature called “emoji auto-complete.”
You can export your files in a range of formats including HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD, JPG, EPUB, and more.
Evernote
Evernote is not for everyone, particularly if you easily get baffled by a plethora of functionalities of an app. For some, Evernote is an indispensable app, making it one of the best apps for iPad Pro to use with Apple Pencil.
It lets you take notes, record audio of your meetings, create sketches, and a lot more. Evernote gives you more fine lines with its pressure sensitivity. With its palm-rejection support, you can lean your arm on the tablet just like you do on paper.
Astropad
Works with any Mac running Mac OS 10.11 and slightly older iPads
With Astropad, you can use your iPad as a graphics tablet that works extremely well. This is an outstanding platform that includes a lot of tools that can be customized according to your requirements. The user interface of this application provides useful shortcuts and is convenient to operate. So, if you are looking to turn your iPad Pro into a drawing tablet and make great use of your Apple Pencil, then Astropad is a good app as it offers a lot of ease around drawing and sketching.
With the seamless setup and connectivity, it works with wireless and wired options too.
Adobe Fresco
Works with iOS or later versions
Fresco is a versatile and user-friendly application. It is a perfect mobile drawing app with tons of incredible brushes that allows you to be creative. If you are looking for some real artwork then, Fresco can bring such effects. The fantastic selection of pixel brushes allows it to run buttery smooth. This new drawing application has the best elements of the fine arts programs for iPad. This application simply enhances your digital ability to be creative. Drawing on different layers is very complex and you need a high-quality app for this purpose. Fresco allows you to draw on different layers individually.
Apple Notes
You might have heard that Apple Notes is the best note-taking application. The app has become very useful because of the functionalities it provides.
Let’s start with the organization part which every note-taking application has. When talking about the Apple Notes, you will see a nesting folder structure that goes to 5 deep levels. You can name every folder with emojis to remember what it is storing. You can use any color from the toolbar to write what you want.
One of the incredible features is the ORC (optical character recognition) technology that allows you to search any type of folder such as pdfs or scanned documents easily.
If you are concerned about the formatting aspects then, you would be glad to know that it has got all the essentials. You can start the notes with the title, heading, and body format as well. Although, by default, it is set to the title. The application is very fast when launching on the Mac or iPad.
Affinity Designer
If you are looking for a good vector graphic application then, this application is the best option available as far as iPads are concerned. This is a perfect mobile experience application that provides a contour tool enabling designers to create abstract shapes for architectural designs and logos.
Affinity Designer also offers 100 percent zoom and pixel preview functionality. This lets the teams view vectors in retina resolution to maintain the accuracy of the artwork. There are industry standards and this application allows you to do all the advanced stuff you need to do. It allows you to make real-time changes during editing and designing. Plus, it has the best and smart tools available for the users that include pencil, corner, pen, curve editing, and geometry operations. With the Apple Pencil, you get 100 percent accuracy.
You must have the Affinity Designer if you have to do these: vector graphics, design, icons, UI, or concept art.
Notability
Notability is a multipurpose application that is specifically used for taking notes. Notability takes a different approach. When opened, you will see your folders in the left sidebar and the notes on the right that have been saved before.
You can create new notes efficiently and can manage multiple documents conveniently. The user interface is very friendly as everything can be found instantly. With Notability, document management is straightforward. It is simple, easy, and instantaneous. Although you can find your documents easily, it is recommended to keep track of your notes.
LiquidText
Works with iOS 13.0 or later
With LiquidText, you can easily manage and read your documents in Word and go through the web pages as well. Whether researching online or finding something from the paper, it is challenging. With this specially designed application for iPads, you can gather information conveniently. With the innovative and interacting interface of LiquidText, you can integrate multiple documents on one screen.
The free version of this application allows you to view one document at a time. Whereas, the subscription allows you to enjoy incredible features of the app. LiquidText is a gesture-based application that is specially designed for active reading. It will not be wrong to say that this app is an academic pursuit that involves searching, highlighting, annotating, and note-taking as well.
This application is very much useful when paired with an iPad Pro because of its spacious canvas and companion Apple Pencil stylus. With LiquidText, Pencil has special powers that include firm press to select images, the ability to auto-highlight texts, and simultaneous scroll function.
Flow by Moleskine
Moleskine’s new application Flow is a digital notebook that understands what it takes to succeed as a notebook replacement. It provides all the tools to customize your experience to your preferences. This application offers an elegant balance of flexibility and convenience which makes it a favorite among users.
The core strength of the Flow is the simple and accessible set of tools and options it offers. You will not find any trouble in discovering the tools and other settings. Apart from custom tools, Flow also provides several useful gestures that you can set according to your liking.
This application is designed as an iPad application and it shines perfectly.
AutoDesk Sketchbook
AutoDesk Sketchbook is notable for being a free drawing app. It got plenty of features that help in creating complex and incredible pieces of art. Earlier, this used to be a paid app but now it is free for all users. With its powerful collection of drawing tools and open-color selectors, AutoDesk Sketchbook is a cut above the rest.
The Apple Pencil integration allows you to add different effects such as brush, fill, sketch, and much more according to your requirements. You can add new effects to your photos and create mesmerizing drawings as well.
Pixelmator
When talking about the best iPad Pro apps, you can not ignore Pixelmator. It is a great option for those who are looking for a feature-full and layer-based photo editor. This application is purposefully used for editing images, but it provides great results for painting and sketching too.
There are incredible and extraordinary options that Pixelmator provides when it comes to painting, sketching, and drawing. All the tools are designed for painting techniques so that everyone could find what they are looking for. This tool is easy-to-use and with the Apple Metal, it can do a lot of leg work when it comes to editing.
Pixelmator comes with a vast array of features that justify its price. You will find all the basic tools on the editing page. After creating or editing images, you can save them in different formats that include PSD, JPEG, PNG, and many others as well.
Graphic for iPad
Works with iOS 11.0 or later
If you are looking for a real equivalent application to Illustrator for iPad then, it will not be wrong to say that Graphic is the best vector drawing app available on iOS.
The Graphic is an application that can do everything that you want in terms of vector work. It comes with all the useful features and tools to help you create high-quality drawings. Some essential setting buttons include undo & redo buttons, nudge buttons, and finger gestures as well. So, if you are looking for high-class vector illustration then, the Graphic can help a lot.
Microsoft OneNote
It’s one of the best apps for iPad Pro that lets you make the best use of your Apple Pencil. However, it’s often overlooked. Considering that it’s made by Microsoft, you can expect this app to have a great interface and capabilities. It offers a wide range of notebook options where you can write, create lists, and draw as well.
Its drawing tools are advanced than what you get in a typical notebook app. You can change colors while drawing to add more creative touch to your art.
If you need an app that lets you take notes and also draw, Microsoft OneNote has you covered. It excels as a powerful organizing app. Based on your preference, you can either use it as your primary note-taking app or drawing app.
You can log in to your Microsoft Office account to automatically save your work in the cloud. It lets you access your work on the go.
Fashion Design FlatSketch
If you’re a fashion designer or an aspiring fashion designer, you need to have this app on your iPad. It lets you design female clothing free and quickly.
What makes it stand out is that you can select from the ready-made templates and turn them into your own designs. You can design blouses, dresses, skirts, jackets, and much more quickly. You can add fine finishing to your designs by adding belts, zippers, pockets, and more.
BimX
If you’re an architect or want to become one, then BimX is an app you should have on your iPad. It lets you put your creative abilities to great use using your Apple Pencil. You can create architectural drawings for your clients or build your portfolio. Its basic version is free.
You’ll save a lot of money and hassle by having this app on your iPad.
Wrap Up
Well, that completes our list of the best apps for iPad Pro you should try with your Apple Pencil. You can download these apps from your Apple App Store. Some apps are completely free with in-app purchases while others come at a little cost.
These apps can be utilized for a variety of purposes including sketching, drawing, painting, note-taking, and more. We hope that you’ll find an app that fits your needs.
