Adobe Eazel (for iPad)

Adobe Eazel

Adobe Eazel

Adobe Eazel

Adobe Eazel

Adobe Eazel

Adobe Eazel ($4.99) turns your iPad into a blank canvas on which you can virtually draw and paint using your fingers or a stylus. Eazel makes sketching a little more entertaining, and the dynamic interface hides all the controls in a way that gives you an entirely open canvas at all times, yet still makes them quickly accessible. The app connects to Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 ($430, 5 stars) and later the same way a Bluetooth-enabled device would connect to your computer or laptop.
Eazel and two other new apps—Adobe Nav and Color Lava ($2.99, 3.5 stars)—mark Adobe's first foray into app-based plug-ins for Photoshop, and I for one am excited to see more. Because Eazel is a tiny and moderately-priced app, Adobe enthusiasts should keep their expectations in check. The app isn't kitted out features, nor is it very powerful on its own. But it can be a fun companion to Photoshop if you enjoy casual sketching on the go. Note that I got advance code to test—none of Adobe's three new iPad apps are available in the App Store yet. The company says it expects them to be available in May.

Blank Canvas Interface
When you first launch Adobe Eazel, an image of a ghostly hand appears to show you how to use the controls. The image speaks a thousand words, as the saying goes, and is representative how Adobe approached the user interface for this app. There are no tutorials or documentation, and few words.
Tap the screen to clear the image of the hand, and a blank canvas takes over your entire iPad screen. Touch all five fingers to the surface, and five controls appear, as shown in the launch image. Each control mechanism maps to a different finger, with the most often-used controls connected to the most adept fingers, the index and middle fingers. 
To select a control, simply keep the finger connected to it on the iPad, but lift the others. Or, if you remove all five fingers at once quickly, the controls align neatly on the screen so you can see them easier and select them using which ever finger or stylus you want. If you have problems that affect dexterity, like arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, the touch-and-release function helps tremendously. Eazel detects whether you're using your left or right hand, so the controls always map to the same fingers.
Thumb. he thumb maps to a button that contains three functions: undo (left-curling arrow), redo (right-curling arrow), and clear the canvas ('X'). After testing the Eazel app for a while, I started coaching myself not to go near the thumb button because I kept accidentally deleting my images before I was done with them. That pesky 'X' looks like it might just close the application, when in reality, it deletes your image. Additionally, multiple undos and redos are not supported, which quickly became the bane of my artistic existence while testing Eazel. You can only undo the most recent stroke.
Index finger. The index finger maps to the color picker, which is the most often-used control in Eazel. Selecting the color picker brings up a gradient color wheel. Drag your finger around the circle to select the color you want. Five bubbles sitting off to the side let you store up to five colors so you can reuse them quickly and easily.
Middle finger. The middle finger connects to a sizing tool. Select the tool, then slide your middle finger up or down the screen to increase or decrease the size of the brush. An on-screen circle representing your brush dynamically changes size so you can preview the brush size in real time.
Ring finger. The ring finger maps to the opacity tool, which adjusts the level of transparency of the color. Slide your finger up or down the screen to dynamically change the opacity. A preview of how the paint will look on screen appears in a small circle wherever you last left your finger while you were drawing (or, where you last left your "paintbrush"). Turning the opacity down creates paints that look and react more like watercolors, which run and bleed together more easily than acrylics or oils. A more opaque color sticks in place a little better. You won't find any controls for fine tuning the paint's other variables, like viscosity and weight, or for changing the brush stroke. This little app just doesn't support these more complex features that you would expect from full-sized software, like Corel Painter.
Pinkie. The pinkie gives you access to settings, although there's only two of them, and they aren't really "settings" per se. Rather, the pinkie lets you save the photo locally to your iPad's photo bank, or transmit the image to Photoshop. To take advantage of the later, you'll need to connect Eazel to Photoshop, which can be done via a "PS" button in the lower right corner.
Eazel-eze
Adobe Eazel connects to Adobe Photoshop (CS5.1 and later) the same way any other Bluetooth-enabled device would connect to your computer. The program has a few simple prompts that walk you through the process. Once the two are connected, you can port your Eazel sketches into Photoshop and really do something with them, like layer them on top of each other, animate them, and so on.
When you're drawing, sketching, and painting on the canvas, typical iPad controls like pinch to zoom and dragging the viewable area around using two fingers come into play. Eazel reads and responds to those two kinds of input very well, but, when you paint, there is a noticeable lag. In testing, I dragged my finger across the screen to lay down a color, lifted it, and saw a stuttering application of paint after the fact. But as a tiny app on a mobile device, I don't think Eazel deserves too much heat for not responding at the speed of lightning.
Adobe Eazel and its app siblings (Color Lava and Adobe Nav) are due to hit the Apple App store in May. Of the three iPad apps, Eazel is my least favorite. Adobe Nav, an app that holds your Photoshop tools, is at least utilitarian. And Color Lava, the palette for mixing colors, delivers a richer interactive experience because of the way paints swirl and blend. Paints in Eazel, on the other hand, flow and dry more like water colors. I don't see any reason Eazel and Color Lava couldn't be one app. Combining the paint properties of Lava with the interface of Eazel would make for a much more interesting app. I also think Eazel needs to support at least three "undos" rather than one to be useful. Adobe Eazel is an interesting app, especially its interface, but it needs a little more finesse.