The iPad has evolved far beyond its original purpose as a device primarily for streaming and web browsing. Today, Apple’s tablets have become powerful creative tools capable of handling everything from digital painting to video editing. This transformation opens up exciting possibilities for artists, designers, and creators on the go.
To help you explore your artistic potential, we’ve curated a list of some of the best iPad apps for creativity available on the App Store. While Adobe’s suite of creative apps remains a staple for many, this list highlights some lesser-known gems that deserve your attention.
Procreate: The Gold Standard for Digital Art
Procreate stands as one of the most beloved drawing apps on iPad—and for good reasons. It offers an extensive selection of brushes that let you paint, sketch, and illustrate with incredible detail and nuance. Its intuitive interface, enhanced by built-in gesture controls, makes the creative process fluid and enjoyable.
Procreate supports stunningly high-resolution canvases—up to 16K by 8K on compatible iPad Pros—and offers powerful tools like QuickShape for perfect shapes, StreamLine for smooth strokes, and ColorDrop for fast coloring. You can create storyboards, GIFs, animatics, and simple animations, importing popular image formats like JPG, PNG, and TIFF.
Once your masterpiece is complete, Procreate’s “Replay” feature lets you watch your creative journey as a time-lapse video, perfect for sharing on social media. It’s available with a one-time purchase of $12.99.
LumaFusion: Professional Video Editing Made Accessible
Ready to step up from iMovie? LumaFusion is an exceptional video editing app tailored for aspiring filmmakers and videographers. It supports multi-layer editing with 4K ProRes and HDR clips, offering a wide range of transitions, effects, and voice-over recording.
LumaFusion’s audio tools include Graphic EQ, Parametric EQ, and voice isolation, ensuring pristine sound quality. Its flexibility extends to project aspect ratios, supporting landscape, portrait, square, widescreen, anamorphic, and more.
Available for a one-time payment of $29.99, LumaFusion also offers optional add-ons such as multicam editing and seamless project export to Final Cut Pro on Mac.
Canva: Design Without Limits
Canva is the ideal platform for those without formal graphic design training who want to create compelling visual content. It offers over 250,000 customizable templates for presentations, social media posts, videos, websites, and infographics.
Beyond easy drag-and-drop editing, Canva incorporates AI-powered tools like “Magic Switch,” which lets you extend images seamlessly, and “Magic Media,” which generates visuals from your ideas.
Canva’s basic features are free, but a $12.99 monthly subscription unlocks unlimited access to AI tools, premium templates, and enhanced editing options.
Affinity Designer 2: Versatile Graphic Design Powerhouse
Affinity Designer 2 combines vector and raster design, making it perfect for professional illustrators, UI/UX designers, game developers, and creatives seeking precision and flexibility. It supports Apple Pencil’s full range of capabilities, including pressure sensitivity and tilt.
The app features extensive gesture controls, customizable keyboard shortcuts, the ability to create custom fonts, and zoom capabilities up to 1,000,000% for pixel-perfect detail.
You can own Affinity Designer 2 with a one-time purchase of $18.49.
Concepts: The Ultimate Sketching and Design Sandbox
Concepts lets you explore ideas freely, whether sketching, mind mapping, storyboarding, or designing. Tools like Nudge, Slice, and Select make editing sketches effortless without redrawing.
With realistic pens, pencils, and brushes that respond naturally to pressure and tilt, Concepts also offers precise scale and measurement tools for real-world dimensions. Customize the app’s tool wheel or bar to fit your workflow perfectly.
The basic app is free, and for $4.99 per month, you unlock advanced brushes and editing features.
Tayasui Sketches: Simple Yet Powerful Sketching
Tayasui Sketches is an approachable drawing app featuring realistic watercolor and acrylic brushes, smooth color blending, gradient tools, and a distraction-free “Zen Mode” for focused creativity.
It supports multitasking, allowing you to drag and drop layers and documents between apps. Personalize your workspace with folders to organize your art. The basic version is free, with a $2.99 monthly subscription adding unlimited layers, more brushes, extended editing options, and backup capabilities.
Dudel Draw: Daily Artistic Challenges
Dudel Draw offers a fresh creative prompt every day by providing a new shape as the foundation for your sketch. Shapes range from simple geometry to abstract forms, and you can rotate or flip them for unique perspectives.
This app encourages playful competition by letting you compare creations with friends, all while sharpening your artistic skills and sparking daily inspiration.
Dudel Draw is free to download and use.
