Please! Pretty Please Update – Substrate Review

I've loved this app -- see below. But it hasn't been updated for newer iOS. I'd be happy to pay if the developers would update the app. Even back them on a crowdsourcing platform. Please update -- thanks very much. This is an update to my earlier review (below). I keep on coming back to Substrate; and recommend it to people all the time. I'm a fan of apps that generate abstract art (while giving you some control) and have tried lots of them. Substrate is still one of my absolute favorites. As I said in my first review, you can get more vivid colors in your substrate designs by using other art apps to create brightly colored designs, saving them to your camera roll, and taking colors from them. The one problem I have with Substrate is saving designs. Some of the time, I pull two fingers down and it just doesn't save the design. One can be sure of saving if you take a screen shot by pressing your iPad's home and power button together, but then you have the little info symbol in the lower right hand corner. There are pros & cons here. If you want to print your designs (say for origami paper, scrapbooking, putting behind a photo in a frame, etc.) the little info symbol may be a problem. Though you can easily solve the problem by cropping in a photo editing app or program. The upside of saving by taking a screen shot is that your design gets saved at a higher resolution than it will if you save via the two finger swipe. This is good if you want to be able to print out your design in a largish size, say to make a 12x12 scrapbook page or a 11x17 print to use for wrapping paper. At any rate, I still highly recommend this great app. ------------------------------------------------------ My daughter & I both love this app. I'm still experimenting with how much I can control the output. One issue i haven't resolved is whether it is possible to get designs that are in other colors than the earthy tones shown in the description. They are lovely, but i'd like some more vibrant colors too. Up until now, I've only used it with photos that have similar tones in them though. I've not had a chance to use something like a brassy blue or neon pic. One thing I have done is to save one of the designs I made with Substrate and use it as my screen saver. It is much nicer than the ones that came with the iPad. And I want experiment with printing some pale Substrate designs and then printing something else over them. UPDATE: I've now come up with a way to get bolder colors. Using wSketch (a simple, free app for drawing with marker-like tools), I used wide markers to fill the page with one/two strong colors, saved that, then used it as a photo for substrate to get the colors from. I now have a lovely, primarily bright blue opening screen on my iPad & get lots of compliments on it. Though I haven't had a chance to try printing images over a Substrate design, I had another idea to try: printing some of my Substrate designs to use as origami paper. For the people who complain that they cannot control the designs being made: 1) experiment with changing the curves, speed, etc in the controls; 2) experiment with tapping in various places & on lines; 3) think in terms of enjoying the design unfold; this app is a wonderful tool for making art, but it does have its limits. Also, it is a tool that you will never be able to control completely; it's a bit like the Japanese method of marbling paper, where the inks float on water and are affected by air currents, temperature, whatever, so that even master marbling artists cannot make the same design twice. If you can relax, experiment, and take delight in watching your designs unfold, this app is for you. If you want to make art with media that you can control tightly, want your pieces to turn out a particular way, and do not enjoy artistic "accidents" then you will not like this app. Finally, I've looked quite a bit and have not found another app at all like this one. So cudos to the developers.
Review by Zarafa on Substrate.