iPads for Digital Design and Photography

Looking for recommendations on what iPad tools to use for our Phography class and Digital Design. Currently, the class shares Macbook Airs, but they are near their end and storage is an issue. Students have iPads so we'd like to get away from the Macs. The students in the class do have access to Procreate and Photoshop for iPads.

9 replies

March 01, 2023

Sketches School is a great app for digital art. Numbers is also neat to use for drawing because it's essentially an infinite whiteboard in which you can separate and resize different parts of your illustration and create different types of coloring. Canva for education is also my (and a lot of our teachers' and students') go-to for graphic design in general if that's what you're looking for.

Hope this answers your question!

March 01, 2023

I currently run a Digital Design Club but would be interested to know what your aims are for the club? Mine does a lot of 2D/3D design and bringing them into Augmented Reality, as well as working in Procreate. We make use of Tinkercad for 3D design, and work a lot in Reality Composer. AR and 3D can be tricky if your iPads are older as they will struggle to process and display the files, and can drain the batteries. Hope that helps!

March 02, 2023

It is actually for a few different classes, but looking at her curriculum it looks like she is doing the typical things in Photoshop with photos, removing blemishes, creating their own images using the shapes and then adding texture and depth. Lightroom seems pretty standard as well there was one lesson that some of the presets don't seem to match when comparing the mac vs iPad.

At least for these classes, we have not done much with AR or 3D design, although that would be a good option to eventually incorporate into the digital art classes. I feel some of the hesitancy is with Adobe being relatively new to the iPads the quality tutorials are not there and the Mac tools don't always line up.


March 01, 2023

I sure wish my classes would have had access to iPad when I was teaching photo. So flexible and so many tools that come with the iPad for photo editing. I currently do much of my digital design with Keynote or Photos. Super starters for learners beginning with design.

March 02, 2023

If you happen to have any examples I could pitch using Keynote that would be awesome that is one thing I have on my list to show, but having actual examples would be helpful.

March 05, 2023

I'll follow up on Cheryl's suggestion in her reply; Susan Maynor posts some great design-focused content to encourage student creativity! I also love this post: Fall Imaginariums to Unleash Creative Genius

March 02, 2023

That’s exciting to move into the iPad space for photography and design. I agree with Cheryl that Keynote is amazing, particularly for entry level or younger learners in the image, design, illustration space - it has a lot of the basic features of Illustrator without the learning curve.

In regards to what you are already using, I think you are on the right track there, particularly with Procreate. It has enormous potential for editing images, as well as the capacity to add to them creatively and animate. There is also so much available online in regards to tutorials etc.

Without knowing the parameters of the course you are teaching, if viable, you could extend your photographic/design/artwork work into augmented reality with AR Makr or for a step further, Reality Composer is amazing.

March 07, 2023

I used to do a selfie project with my middle schoolers. They would take one selfie, and then edit it with at least four different apps to create different effects. I always love using the Snapseed app to edit Photos, I think it’s one of the best! We also used Prisma and Pixlromatic. I had a variety of photo apps that they could explore. We started by learning to use the Apple photo editing tools. Hint - duplicate your base photo several times before starting to edit.

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