http://www.creaceed.com/prizmo/

On the serious side, it is pretty good at taking picture-based text and reliably converting it. If you can photograph uniform type then it can usually do something decent with it.¹ This is both a time saver and power extension of the iphone itself if you need to get hold of an important quote or two. As a teacher, it is changing the way I think about text usability and access. If you can get hold of it conveniently and stick it up on a screen easily enough then it is a tool worth having.

While the OCR function is good enough to make this a great standalone app, there are at least two other features that bring that extra something.

The Whiteboard feature is a handy tool for taking a record of your jottings and then adjusting the image for perspective (you know - when you take a picture at an angle to avoid reflections) and clarity. I have been taking whiteboard images for around ten years now and this is a genuine step up on that process. This is a great unexpected thing.²

The other 'thing' is the voice feature. I know that the Mac has this built in, but there is a convenience to having it in your hand which is pretty special. The ability to use it at any time has massive potential. I have so far been mainly larking about with my students, taking familiar text (often in the form of public warning signs and the like) and getting an alien voice to read it.³

Another experimental aspect is that these voices are likely to turn up in some animation or educational film experiment soon enough. Oh yes.

Summary - Prizmo is a useful, welcome and inspiring step forward that will make a difference to educators, clowns and the like.

¹There are a bunch of image tools to adapt whatever you capture to aid the retrieval process. It is good, although in some cases I can see myself using other pieces of image manipulation software (like Brushes or Sketchbook) to remove some artefacts that might confuse things. ²Ooh I think I'll just wear these trousers because they look good and I need some trousers to wear on account of me being in a street with bare legs and all. Hey, they fit great! Wow! Guess what? I just found a £10 note in the pocket. ³There are a bunch of in-app voices you can purchase for £1.79 each. Well worth it!

Just playing about. A mixture of photo, erasing in Brushes, Compositing in Autosketch and Vectors in Intaglio.

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

Please?

Colour study using Brushes.

Postscript: I am sick of trying to emulate old media using new media.

Here is my gripe:

Brushes app - fabulously smooth painting experience that gets easier as you get further into it. Annoying export limitation: flattened layers.

Sketchbook Mobile app - wonderful psd layered exporting, so flexible. Annoyingly stuttery zooming and unintuitive painting feel. 

Solution!

Using the Brushes app osx viewer thing you can export your material easily but only as flattened layers. What I just figured out (and annoyingly, their documentation doesn’t have this, although it would be valuable if they did) is that if you have, say 4 layers in the original document, simply duplicate the painting that many times and export png separate pics. Because they are transparency-supported formats, you have an easy enough task in photoshop of reassembling/manipulating further if needed.

Bam! Awesome!

Also: it is worth saying that sketchbook mobile is superior in the layer transform area. You can import several images and do some sweet composition (at least, sweet for an iPhone).