ibis Paint

Review by eFreeware

Plenty of people would like to draw on a tablet but talk themselves out of it before they start. The blank canvas feels intimidating, the toolbars look like a cockpit, and the assumption is that real illustration needs a desktop and years of practice. ibisPaint, from ibis inc., is built for exactly that hesitation: it presents itself as an entry point for anyone who thinks drawing looks hard, while still carrying enough machinery underneath to handle serious work.

It has been in the Play Store since October 2019 and sits in the Art & Design category, with a 4.3 average from nearly 12,000 ratings and more than 100,000 installs on Android. The whole series has passed 500 million cumulative downloads, which gives a sense of how widely this style of app has been adopted.

This particular download is the paid, ad-free edition, not the free ibisPaint X. That distinction matters more than it first appears, and I will come back to it, because the developer is unusually direct about how the two relate to each other.

Brushes, materials and the drawing core

The headline numbers are the brushes. The developer lists more than 130,000 of them, alongside over 30,000 materials and more than 3,000 fonts. Read as a catalog, that is a lot of choice for a phone or tablet app, and it suggests you can spend a long time simply exploring what is available before settling on a working set.

Underneath the brush library sits a fairly deep layer system: 27 blending modes, 46 screentones and 86 image filters. Screentones are the dotted shading patterns familiar from comics and manga, and having that many built in points to an app that expects comic and manga artists among its users. The filters suit artists who want to adjust finished artwork inside the app rather than moving it into another program.

The tools that caught my attention are the ones aimed at precision. Vector tools let line work be reshaped rather than redrawn, a reference window keeps an image visible while you work, and radial and symmetry rulers help with repeating patterns and balanced figures. For anyone who has tried to draw a symmetrical character freehand on a small screen, those rulers are the difference between a sketch and something finished.

There are also animated filters and an AI Disturbance feature, both of which sit outside the ordinary drawing workflow. The developer presents all of this as functionality that rivals desktop illustration software, a claim worth treating as marketing rather than a measured comparison, but the list itself is specific enough to judge on its own terms.

From single illustrations to frame-by-frame animation

Drawing is only part of what the app covers. It supports frame-by-frame animation, which means building movement one drawing at a time rather than relying on automated motion. That is the traditional approach, and it is slower, but it is also the one that gives an animator full control over how each frame reads.

The app goes further into video as well, with support for clips that include background music and audio. So the path the developer describes runs from a single illustration, through animation, to a finished video with sound. For a hobbyist who wants to post short animated pieces, that is a complete route rather than a first step that requires other software to finish.

The other piece is time-lapse recording, which captures your creative process so it can be shared. That sounds like a small feature but matters in practice: process videos are a genre of their own, and having the recording handled inside the app removes a separate step for anyone who wants to show how a piece came together.

What the paid version changes, and what Premium adds

This app costs $15.99 and contains no ads. It is the ad-free counterpart to ibisPaint X, the free version most people encounter first. If you have used the free one and found the interruptions irritating, buying this edition is the direct answer.

There is a wrinkle, and the developer does not hide it. Premium Membership, bought inside the app, is what unlocks everything. Premium costs less if you buy it in ibisPaint X instead. That is a frank thing for a developer to write on its own paid product, and it is worth taking at face value: if your plan is to pay for Premium anyway, the economics favor the free app.

So the paid edition makes most sense for someone who wants the drawing experience without ads and does not intend to buy Premium. If you do intend to buy it, the two purchases together cost more here than they would there. That is the trade-off in plain terms, and it is the single most important thing to understand before spending anything.

Permissions, styluses and getting set up

The app asks for access to photos and videos, microphone input and push notifications. The developer is clear that none of these are required: all are optional, and the core features remain available if you decline them. What you lose is the connected behavior. Photo library access is what lets you import artwork files and images and save what you create, including videos. The microphone permission is there so the app can talk to add-ons like digital styluses. Alerts keep you posted on your artwork, new releases and announcements.

If you draw on a tablet, the stylus question comes up early. The developer maintains a list of supported digital styluses on its site, which is the sensible place to check before assuming your pen will behave the way you expect. The app runs on smartphones as well as tablets, though the larger canvas is where the layer system and rulers will feel most natural.

Questions and bug reports left in reviews cannot be answered, so users are directed to a support desk instead. If something goes wrong, going through that channel rather than the review box is the route that gets a response.

How I would approach it as a beginner

The developer's own framing is that this is for people who think drawing is hard, and it points to a YouTube channel with tutorials on getting the most out of the app. That pairing is the practical starting point: watch a few short walkthroughs before deciding the interface is beyond you, because the app is explicitly designed to be usable without hesitation.

My advice would be to resist the catalog at first. With more than 130,000 brushes available, hunting for the right one can replace drawing entirely. Pick a small handful, learn how they respond, and treat the rest as something to explore once you have a finished piece or two behind you. The same goes for filters and blending modes; they are more useful when applied to work you already understand.

Animation is best left until the still-image side feels comfortable. Frame-by-frame work multiplies whatever you already do by the number of frames, so the habits you build on a single illustration carry directly into it. Once those are in place, the move to animated clips with audio and time-lapse recording is a natural next step rather than a separate skill.

Finally, be deliberate about which permissions you grant. The core features work without any permissions, so you can start with none and add photo library access when you first want to import or save something.

A considered purchase for a specific kind of artist

ibisPaint is a capable, unusually broad art app, and the paid edition removes the advertising that comes with its free sibling. The brush, material and font counts are large, the layer and ruler tools support careful work, and the reach into frame-by-frame animation, video with sound and time-lapse recording means one app can carry a project from first line to finished clip.

The catch is the payment structure. At $15.99 you get the app without ads, but the full feature set still sits behind Premium Membership, and the developer itself notes that buying that membership inside the free ibisPaint X is the cheaper route. Anyone planning to pay for Premium should weigh that carefully, because the paid edition is not the economical path to everything.

That leaves a clear audience. This is for someone who wants an ad-free drawing and animation app and is content with what the base feature set offers, or who simply prefers to pay once for the version without interruptions. Beginners who think drawing looks hard are the group the developer designed it around, and the supporting tutorials make that a realistic starting point. If Premium is part of your plan, the free app plus the membership is the cheaper route.

What's new in version 14.1.2

[Fixed Bugs and Problems] - Fixed an issue where, when there was a Selection Area, a shape drawn with Smart Shape on a Vector Layer could be distorted after being applied. - Fixed an issue where the app could crash when returning to My Gallery with a keyboard shortcut while a tutorial was displayed. etc. For more details, see: https://ibispaint.com/historyAndRights.jsp?newsID=309076693