> Adobe Fresco

Free (Premium $9.99/month) From Adobe, adobe.com

1Adobe Fresco is free, with the monthly Premium subscription unlocking access to over 1,000 brushes and the option to import your own brushes and color libraries, as well as 100GB of cloud storage. Fresco’s interface is similar to Photoshop for iPad, with a slick and well–designed workflow. There’s an excellent selection of brushes and the jewel in the crown is the Sensei–powered Live Brushes, which give an uncanny feeling of the real thing. Fully customizable via simple menus, they make it possible to blend virtual watercolors and oils in a remarkable way.

As well as the option to use vector and raster brushes on the same canvas you get unlimited layers, great layer management, clipping and masking tools, and also extensive text support. Since it connects to Adobe’s wider ecosystem, documents are saved to the cloud and can be opened in Photoshop or Illustrator, and exported in various web–friendly formats.

Live Brushes are remarkable

Free version is powerful

Gentle learning curve

Subscription model not for everyone