Layers – A Complete Drawing App…Nearly

Layers brings something to the iPhone that artisits have been clamoring for. Layers brings, what else, layer control. Layers touts itself as the most advanced natural media painting application for the iPhone and iPod touch according to its website. There are plenty of drawing apps in the appstore, How does Layers stack up? Lets see.

Right off the bat, Layers provides something that little or no applications offer, exportation to .psd format. That means that any layer-specific work you do in the app will be preserved if or when you bring it into Photoshop. This is hugely beneficial for those artists that have been standoff-ish to doing heavy artwork on their phone because there wasn’t support for transferring to a computer while preserving their work. Now there is.

So how well does Layers stack up against other drawing apps. Well, Layers comes standard with a range of eight brushes, all of which are useful. The developer also built in support for future brush packs to download. A constant influx of brushes would be sweet. You can adjust the size and opacity of the brush (and the eraser). Layers has a full color selector allowing access to any color availaible on the iDevice. You can pinch and zoom the workspace with your standard two-finger gestures. If you tap and hold anywhere on the image, a color chooser pops up for easy color switching. That was a really nice touch.

Where this app really shines is its Layer control. Layers, at the touch of a button, allows you to add a layer to your image. You can choose for the layer to be transparent or choose a picture or color to fill it with. The app shos you your layer by changing the perspective of our image and physically showing you the layers that comprise it. Each layer can be identified easily because you can see whats drawn on each. Reorganizing them is as simple as dragging the layers up or down. You can merge layers or rotate them. There is a significant amount of options available. Though I didn’t see an option to easily turn a layer invisible.

Also of note, Layers allows you to undo up to 30 times. That means if a color you chose way long ago is wrong you may still be able to fix it. Also, if you downoad the free Layers viewer computer client, you can sync the app with it and watch your drawings draw themselves on your computer. This is a nice feature but ultimately not-substantial. I would like to ask the developer to remedy a few things. First off, there are no “favorite color” options. Its not always so easy to pick the color I want with the dropper. Favorite color saves are critical. Also I was surprised by the lack of basic tools, like a selction tool or a paint bucket tool among others. While these aren’t deal-breakers, they are limiting.

Layers is a great drawing app. If offers a certain level of complexity that other drawing apps don’t and its done with top-notch presentation value. At its price of $4.99 (USD) Layers will appease any digital artists craving for layer control on the go. It will also appease anyone with an itch to draw and cant find an app to soothe, look no further.