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Hey Peeps! Summer break is almost over! And I'll be in my final year for undergrad Architecture in Manchester *inserts crying emoji*. With the 9-Weeks Internship that I've done during the break everything just feels like they are moving super fast. But I still enjoyed the remaining of the holidays with my family nevertheless. Since the new academic year is about to start, I figured that I'll share some apps on the iPad Pro that I've found to be quite helpful for architecture (and perhaps for studies in general as well). Soooooooo, let's go! For the 2 years I've been in architecture, I've been juggling between my iPad Pro and my laptop to get my works done. From taking notes to designing to giving that final touch to my CAD drawing, almost half of my work is done on my iPad Pro. I guess one major reason I keep on using my iPad is because it's as if it never leaves my person. I've even been using my iPad Pro for quite a long time during the internship period. Here are some of my fave apps I used (Well, I'm omitting the very basics like Microsoft Office apps from the list just because they're basics haha. Also because I don't use them that often). 1. "Notes" by Apple (Pre-installed/Free) It's safe to say that all iOS comes with the Notes app pre-installed and with the new updates from iOS 11, there are more things you can do with the Notes app. With that said, this is my main note-taking app. Some might use other 3rd-party apps but I like this one. One thing is because with the Apple Pencil, you can access it with just a tap on the lock screen. You don't even need to go unlock the iPad Pro first. And well, being a person that likes to take notes by hand, but is a tad lazy to bring papers, I enjoy writing in the app using the Apple Pencil. Plus, with the Pencil, everything is like how I write on a piece of paper including my messy unreadable handwriting. Pssssttt,, if you're using the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, you might wanna try the PaperLike screen protector. It gives a bit of friction to the screen so making the screen feel like an actual paper when you're writing (though not 100% alike but it feels good). No, this is not a paid review haha. 2. "Pixelmator" by Pixelmator Team (£4.99) The Pixelmator is said to be an alternative for the famous Adobe Photoshop except that it has lesser feature and has an easier interface (just like any other mobile version of apps are). Though the lesser feature, I must say that I still like it and I do most of my poster designs here. With the known advantage of the iPad Pro being a highly portable tablet, Pixelmator is really convenient if you need to make a quick design on-the-go as you can get it up and running anywhere you are. Well, if you ask me whether Pixelmator is the best there is in the market, I'd has to say no. There's actually a higher end photo-editing app called Affinity Photo (£19.99) and designing app called Affinity Designer (£19.99). However, because of these two apps are high-end products, they have a more (read: very) complicated interface than Pixelmator. You'd actually need to take some time to familiarise yourself with the tools and stuff, unlike the Pixelmator which is pretty easy and basic to use. With that said, I like Pixelmator better since I'm still a newbie in doing graphic designs. If you guys wanna do a simple design, then Pixelmator is more likely to be your go-to app. Otherwise, if you are more advance and would like a more well-equipped designing app, then the Affinity collection might be more suitable for you. Oh yeah, I believe it's important to mention that Pixelmator works with raster and not vector. 3. "Adobe Comp CC" by Adobe (Free) Adobe Comp CC is generally an app that you use to make layouts. I like to read "Comp" as "Composition" because that's actually what the app is for. If you're used to make layouts and compositions using the well-known Adobe InDesign, then this app would most likely please you. However, I must say that Adobe Comp CC is not only limited to be an alternative to InDesign as you can actually send your drafts to Photoshop, Illustrator, Muse and InDesign from the Creative Cloud (CC) edition as well as exporting it into a PDF. I rarely send out my layouts or drafts into any of the said Adobe laptop apps as I like to compose them from scratch till end only on the iPad Pro and export as PDF later on. However, the app is pretty basic. You can't actually add gradient to shapes or make sophisticated stuffs with it, so you're gonna need to send it out to Adobe Illustrator for those things. If you're an Architecture student - like me - or anyone that needs to produce presentation sheets, this app is for you. 4. "Graphic" by Autodesk (£8.99) Unlike Pixelmator, the Autodesk Graphic (or Graphic for short) is a vector graphics software. For those who are familiar with vector designs, you'll know that this would be an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. You could find other free alternatives but I personally prefer Graphic. Well, first, for Mac users, there's a Mac version of the app (£28.99). Second, You could do pretty much do everything that Adobe Illustrator has to offer (sorry, I don't use a Mac so I can't compare it with the laptop version). Though currently there isn't an option to export it as an AI. file but you could still export it as a PDF or SVG to open it in Adobe Illustrator. However, you couldn't import an Ai. file into the app so that's a bit of a drawback (but you could always export Ai. as PDF or SVG). Third, due to the app being a mobile app, then the commands and tools are simplified. I find it easier to design using Graphic rather than Illustrator especially when using the pen tool. The quality that you could achieve is still as nice as what you could get from Adobe Illustrator. Ouh, have you ever used Illustrator to edit maps from Digimaps or things with many layers on your laptop and Illustrator just buffers for so long and suddenly it crashes? (if you can't relate this then are you really an architecture student? Jk) Well one thing I like most about using this on the iPad Pro is that it seems that the iPad Pro has better processing speed and handling of such situations. My laptop could sometimes take 10 minutes to open a file but the iPad Pro would usually take at most a minute. 5. "AutoCAD" by Autodesk (Free) If you're an architecture student, I'm pretty sure you've came across AutoCAD although you don't actually use it yourself. Unlike the desktop version of the AutoCAD, this iPad version is actually quite basic. You don't have to enter commands like the desktop version but it does let you to draw lines, make layers and a couple other more functions. If you're thinking of using this version to make your technical drawings, just stop. Although the app is quite simplified as compared to the desktop version, using the desktop version might actually help you get your drawings done quicker. But if it's during the crucial week when you need to get your porfolio handed in and there's just a tiny bits of things you need to tweak here and there, then this app is here for that! Honestly, I just use it to open maps from Digimap and take site measurements and then continue doing either in my laptop or in the Graphic app (the one I mentioned above). 6. "Documents" by Readdle (Free) This app is basically just a document reader app. You could read most documents like pdf, docx, pptx, txt, etc. I like to keep my lecture slides and notes in here. You could make annotations on the PDFs as well to help you make notes. This is easier if you have the Apple Pencil because your writings could be more precise than just scribbling with your fingers. I usually open my lecture slides during in the lecture hall and just scribble whatever the lecturer is saying. Also, I use this app when I need to download some things from the web that can't be downloaded in Safari (i.e. videos and songs) so that I could use it in any of the other apps. 7. "LumaFusion" by Luma Touch LLC (£19.99) LumaFusion is basically the best video editing app on the iPad Pro (as of the day I'm writing this post). It basically has more functions that any other iOS video editors and it's even been promoted in the AppStore. Some of the features includes frame-by-frame editing, more editing layers, more complex transitions, etc. I've never actually used this for architecture because by the time we actually got a video assignment, my groupmates insisted on using Adobe Premier Pro but I've used it to make videos for the Malaysian Community of Old Trafford society when I was the Multimedia EXCO. When exporting your final video, it also gives quite a number of options just like the ones you could get in Adobe Premier Pro. The final quality could also be 4K depending on your footages' quality of course (if you didn't use 4K footages then you won't have 4K outputs duhhhh). 8. "Drive" by Google (Free) I don't know if I need to explain about Google Drive because I think everyone knows about it. The iPad version of the Google Drive gives a slick, minimal look. The features offered in the app is almost similar with the desktop web version. If you need to make a Google Form, you'll can't do it on the app (I don't know why you'd want to do it on the iPad because it's just more convenient to do it on the desktop). If you have your documents stored in another app (i.e. the Document app I've told earlier) you could have it exported into Google Drive from the app using the Share Sheet. 9. "iLovePDF" by iLovePDF (Free) Okay this app is actually very useful for me since I'll compile my portfolio sheets for submission using the iPad Pro. Usually the Uni has a certain file size limit for submission but as an architecture student you'll bound to at least face one time of exceeding the limit. It's just natural because you'll want to have the highest quality of drawings and images and words and everything in your portfolio. So, all these high quality sources will make your document size bigger especially if you're like me who prefers drawings to be in vector form rather than raster. This app gives several options of what you could do to a PDF file. My favourite? Of course it's the compress PDF function. However, if your file size is way off the charts than what it should actually be, then you might have to do it several times. There are times when my portfolio is literally 100+ mb but then even when I chose the "least compressed" option, my file size reduces by a lot until it actually is below the file size limit for the submission. If you're the guy that makes all of his portfolio sheets on the iPad Pro, this is the app you MUST get! 10. "The Internet Archive Companion" by Hunter L Brown (Free) Okay this is my favourite app to get sources. If you've ever gone to the Archive.org web, you'll know that it's a place where you could get archived materials including books. If you're lucky you might even find newly published books as well. This app is basically just simplified version to the website itself. For me, if you're gonna open Archive on your iPad, it's better to use the app then to actually open the website.
So I hope these 10 iPad Pro apps I've listed could be helpful for you if you're looking for apps to download on your newly bought iPad. If not, I just hope you've enjoyed this post and perhaps you could leave some comments if there are other suggestions you've found to be helpful on the iPad Pro. I guess that's it for now, I'll see y'all later. Ciao!
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