Astropad Studio Aims for Professionals to Use the iPad Pro as a Graphics Tablet

The team that brought us Astropad, the popular iPad-to-Mac graphics tablet, has debuted an all new advanced product aimed at creative professionals. The new Astropad Studio features customizable gestures, keyboard support, unlimited shortcut sets, and sports Liquid Extreme which offers five times faster performance over the standard Astropad.

Astropad Studio allows users to interact directly with the windows of their favorite applications loaded on their Mac using the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro. In my opinion, using a graphics tablet for post-processing provides a more natural feeling experience that really connects you to your images in a way that using a mouse or trackpad can’t match.

Touted as their “highest performance tool yet,” Astropad Studio utilizes an in-house creation called Liquid Extreme which handles image quality and responsiveness. Astropad Standard (with Liquid) is capable of 5 MB/s whereas the new Astropad Studio (with Liquid Extreme) is capable of 40 MB/s.

Productivity is expanded with the support for Bluetooth keyboards or Apple’s own iPad Pro Smart Keyboard. Additionally, Magic Gestures can be created and used with touch-Pencil combinations to speed up editing workflows, and unlimited application-specific Shortcut Sets can be made in Astropad Studio.

Astropad Studio uses a subscription model to remain sustainable while offering professional users priority support and advanced features with monthly updates. Pricing is $64.99 per year, or $7.99 per month. You can get started on a 7-day free trial and learn more information about Astropad Studio on their website.

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Ryan Mense is a wildlife cameraperson specializing in birds. Alongside gear reviews and news, Ryan heads selection for the Fstoppers Photo of the Day.

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10 Comments

Pretty cool! As much as I made fun of the Apple Pencil when it was announced, it does have a great feel to it. Would be great to re-touch images with it. Now I just need an iPad Pro haha.

I make fantastic use of Astropad on my iPad Pro for illustration and photography... such, that I'll enthusiastically PASS on this new rental based model. Added features or not.

They're charging within $2 of renting Photoshop and Lightroom themselves, together. Yikes.

www.lifeascinema.blogspot.com

Sorry but this is a rip of. How about devlop and finish the product they initialy sold. First sell the app and then make pro version.
Anyway if you use a external sceen with your Mac in Adobe rgb this app is useless. Colors do not match at all. wanted to retouch red skin looking at my Eizo screen but on the pad no red skin to retouch :)
I suppose Duet might bee a better deal even they charge extra to.
Me I gave up for now :(

This work great. Even better compared to Wacom. Double worth all the money

Well - I just dropped $30 on the 'Standard' app 2 days before this was announced and it would appear there is no rebate available. Dammit. Don't get me wrong, I love the standard app, but with a choice of both, I'd take the Studio but there's no way I'm splashing more cash.

They seem to be doing something for people on a case-by-case basis if you check out their Twitter replies:
https://twitter.com/astropadapp/with_replies

I'd try reaching out to them about it.

this application is simply amazing! this should make wacom worried

More "RentWare"? No thanks!

I'm going to give this a try this weekend. If it is faster and more reliable than the original version I feel it will be worth $65 a year. A company has to make money in order to keep improving a product. I really liked the Standard version, except the loss of image quality when making a selection, the "marching ants". Duet has been getting better lately but the pressure sensitivity is still unreliable compared to Astropad.

I do think it would be nice if they gave a credit off the first year to the owners of Astropad Standard.

I've been using Astropad on the iPad Pro for almost a year now - it replaced my Wacom completely for retouching. Looking forward to try the Studio version although subscription model is a little steep IMO