Get Creative with an iPad Pro

The Infolab in Room 2250 recently added an iPad Pro to its arsenal of creative tools. When paired with an Apple Pencil (available to check out at the circulation desk), the iPad Pro becomes a highly-responsive drawing pad. The iPad is connected to one of the more powerful design stations in the library, ensuring fast rendering and the ability to easily manage large files.

According to Jay Ray, the lab’s Technology Operations Manager, the power of the iPad Pro comes from its ability to mimic the look and feel of drawing on paper. “The instantaneous response and lack of lag-time, along with the pressure-sensitivity of the stroke on the iPad Pro, make it the perfect tool for detailed design work.”

Two apps are pre-loaded onto the iPad Pro to facilitate creativity – Procreate and Astropad. Procreate is one of the most advanced painting apps ever designed for mobile devices and allows users to create beautiful sketches, paintings, or illustrations. Astropad is an app that lets you use your iPad as a drawing surface for Adobe software such as Photoshop. It turns the iPad Pro into a first class Mac graphics tablet.

Students are finding a variety of uses for this new workstation. Emma Conklin reports, “I use the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to help digitize my sketches for textile design and to create repeating patterns in Adobe Illustrator. It’s awesome to be able to draw the same way I would on paper and easily change variables like color and line width without starting all over and wasting time and paper.”

Stop by the Infolab and spend some time being creative today.