Best iPad Apps

Chapter 3. Creative Corner

They said the iPad was gonna be a watch-only device. They said Generation iPad was gonna grow up sapped of creative know-how, their will to make stuff pretty much zombied out of them by the brain-leeching effects of staring at The Man’s Media all day long. Man, were they wrong. The apps you’ll meet in this chapter may well be one of creative kind’s most inspiring, empowering, and flat-out fun collections of digital tools that we’ve seen since the arrival of the computer. In the music department, what’s available ranges from multi-instrument-powered mobile recording studios to vocal-boosting makeovers, and from neophyte-friendly tune makers to strange new music machines. Visual artists and photographers are in for all kinds of treats. Painters and sketchers are getting awfully close to the day when those white pulp pads are simply not necessary; your black ’Pad can do the same thing, plus a whole lot more. Shutterbugs get a moveable darkroom that puts Photoshop-style power literally in your hands. (Advance preview: selecting areas by tracing them was never easier than on a touchscreen.) Sculptors, time to pinch and spread in a whole new way. From potterymaking to 3D models to virtual firework shows, you’re working here with a medium that’s both familiar and utterly new. And for our youngest artists, the intuitive operation of the tappable canvas means they ...