App: iPastels
Developer: Norbyte
Genres: Graphics & Design, Education

A painting app for all artists, whether you’re experienced or just starting out. 
Perfect for creating beautiful works of art or a quick sketch whenever and wherever you have a burst of inspiration.
You can also try out ideas and compositions before starting on a new painting in real life, or practise and refine your skills, all without the added cost of art supplies.

• LIFELIKE PASTEL SIMULATION •
The app features live-calculated brushes and strokes, making a realistic pastel simulation possible.
Painting tools include soft pastels, oil pastels, pastel pencils, smudge tool, and more.

• REALISTIC PAPER/CANVAS TEXTURES •
When creating a new picture, a unique, non-repeating paper texture is generated that will interact in real-time with the live-calculated strokes you paint.
You can change the default-generated texture to, for example, canvas, which goes great with oil pastels!

• PRECISE COLOR BLENDING •
When painting, especially with soft pastels, use Smudge or the Cotton Swab to blend and smoothen the colors right on the paper, as you would in real life.
With oil pastels, in addition to smudging, the blending is often done by the pastel sticks themselves (for best results, reduce the force or use a similar or lighter color).
If you use an Apple Pencil, it will feel incredibly realistic if you use the stylus to draw and use your finger to Smudge (assigned as a 2nd tool)!

• FINGERTIP = STROKE SIZE •
When you paint, the app measures how much of your finger is touching the screen and changes the stroke size accordingly.
Apply just the corner of your fingertip for a thin line, or the whole fingerprint area for a broad stroke.
A 2nd tool assigned to your finger will still use this feature, so don’t ignore it just because you have an Apple Pencil!

• LEFT-HANDED? •
Just swipe the toolbar over to the other side!

• PARAMETERS CAN BE CHANGED LIVE •
Use any buttons or controls to change/adjust color, size, force, simultaneously while painting.

• UNIVERSAL PURCHASE •
If you choose to buy the Pro upgrade, this one-time in-app purchase will unlock all Pro features in the app on all available platforms (iPad-iPhone-Mac)!

• METAL •
The engine is based on Metal, with 128-bit color and floating-point arithmetic.

• SWIFT •
The app was developed entirely using Swift (earlier versions used C++).

• APPLE PENCIL SUPPORT • FULL SCREEN PAINTING • SEAMLESS PATTERN EDITING MODE •
• DARK MODE • LANDSCAPE • PORTRAIT • WIDE COLOR •
• MULTIPLE LAYERS • PHOTO TRACING MODE (Pro feature) •

Release notes:
[NEW] Added some selection options (like “Select All”) in Work in Progress (Gallery). Long-press the Multi-Select button or tap “Selected…” next to the buttons.
[IMPROVED] (for devices with attached hardware keyboard) Minor changes/additions to the keyboard shortcuts in Work in Progress (Gallery), and the shortcuts for Copy, Paste, Duplicate now work with layers if the Layers stack is open.
[FIXED] Copy Layer was not always working properly.
[FIXED] Some minor multi-select issues in Work in Progress (Gallery).
[FIXED] A couple of drag & drop issues.
[FIXED] Rotating the device could, in some very rare circumstances, cause the app to crash.
[IMPROVED] Tapping or long-pressing a dial could result in an unintentional adjustment (especially if using Apple Pencil).
[FIXED] A very improbable crash bug.
[IMPROVED] A few minor things.