TUAW's Daily App: ArtRage

ArtRage is a very slick drawing and painting app, originally for Windows and Mac, but now also found on the iPad. The app is extremely realistic. You can use any number of various brushes and paints, and the colors will even blend and warp on the canvas as you lay them down, just as they would on a real surface. The iPad app even allows for unlimited layers and blending, and it can export files out with a sync or send them straight to email for the Photo library.

ArtRage is an excellent app for the iPad, and just for the CES 2011 show, it's been discounted to just US$1.99. If you're interested in a serious art app for the iPad, that's a bargain at even twice the price.

We got to meet Ambient Design at CES just last evening here at the show in Las Vegas, and in addition to chatting about the iPad app and the sale, we asked the representative if ArtRage would find its way onto the Mac App Store as well, since the original program is still available for OS X. But we were told that it wouldn't. There was an issue with the way that ArtRage opens certain file formats in layers, and the company rep told us that because Apple was leery of malware and locking down the way certain apps opened certain files, ArtRage as it exists wouldn't be allowed in the store. That's too bad. Hopefully as the Mac App Store develops, Apple will find a way for developers like Ambient Design to do what they want to do.