Is there anyone who can please implement transparent layer import/export for Brushes, Intaglio Sketchpad, Autodesk sketchbook mobile and Adobe Ideas?

Please?

Exporting SVG from illustrator. Use this particular love if you want the babies to survive the jump.

Do artists dream of electric sketchpads?

Adobe ideas has a ten layer feature (in-app purchase £2.99). Just found it via an app review site. These apps are getting much better and in some ways offer a decent level of practical fun but there are still a lot of frustrations. Here are a few of my observations:

Good • colour scheme tool is really really handy. Using existing photos of imported album images • the supposedly infinite canvas is an interesting idea. Currently the export options are a literal ‘what you see’ or a PDF via email that the blurb suggests to be useable within the other adobe products like illustrator or photoshop. Whether this means layer extraction is something I will check out later. • for handwriting notes it is okay - smoothing the stroke using a vector approximation method that often annoys me on illustrator. Here it is okay. • the tools are pretty well set up. No one has hit the same level of accessibility that Sprang/Brushes manages with the hot spots, but these are nice controls.

Bad • brushes envy I am afraid. Zooming is jittery. Brushes isn’t. Maybe it’s the pixels vs vectors maths that does it. Annoying in practice. • screen estate is limited even with a retina display you are still struggling.

End thoughts: Am I being once again caught up in that loop that first seduced me a few years back - seeking a digital hand drawing replacement dream? When I finally realised that it doesn’t exist, my art got much better because the digital tools served me rather than the other way round.

The iOS technology is so exciting because it seems that these tools can begin to deliver experiences that can at least approximate real life drawing practices. It is a dream that is still unrealised, but I like exploring it.

Here is a workflow wish list:

To be able to draw an image in Black and White, take a decent macro photo and then extract a high contrast black line layer from the image (as I do with my desktop materials) and then apply colour to the piece underneath the transparent areas before exporting at a reasonable size.

Dreaming.