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[seanw]

Fresco is now available on the Android Market! Feel free to post suggestions here and let me know what you think of the app. Thanks!

Fresco Lite on the Android Market: goo.gl/D7ZDW


Fresco Pro on the Android Market: goo.gl/8CVhN


Fresco is a powerful painting and image editing app that features layers, filters, an intuitive interface and more! Designed for both novices and professionals, Fresco has everything you need to create digital artwork on your phone or tablet.

Install "Fresco Pro" from the Market to upgrade from the Lite version for exclusive features:
- ad free (versus ad supported).
- 4 layers (versus 2).
- 21 filters (versus 2).
- 12 brushes (versus 3).
- export to Adobe® Photoshop® format (.PSD) with layers intact.
- brush spacing setting.

★ Feature List ★

Full support for layer-based image editing:
- Add, duplicate, merge, hide/show and reorder layers.
- Transform layers by scaling, rotating, moving and mirroring.
- Alter layer opacity.

Enhance your work with the use of over 20 filters:
- Create interesting effects with the blur, sharpen, emboss, noise and vignette filters.
- Adjust image colors with the brightness, saturation, exposure and posterize filters.

An interface where everything you need is at your fingertips:
- Configure the texture, size and opacity of the brush and eraser tools.
- Select colors using the color palette, HSV color picker and eye dropper tools.
- Use gestures for zooming and panning.
- Reverse mistakes with the robust undo system.

More features:
- Export your work to Adobe® Photoshop® format (.PSD) with layers intact.
- Import and position photos on the canvas.
- Your work is kept safe by the autosave feature.
- Share your images with other apps to upload to Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox and more.
- Fresco uses less than 1Mb of storage space and is optimised for speed.

Share your creations in the official Flickr and Facebook groups for Fresco:
flickr.com/groups/fresco]flickr.com/groups/fresco]flickr.com/groups/fresco
facebook.com/pages/Fresco-A-Mobile-Art-Studio-for-Android/169892059738943

Permissions required:
- SD Card: Used to save images to your SD card
- Internet and Access Network State: Used to display ads in the Lite version and to send optional crash reports.

Requirements: Android 2.1 or above. Multi-touch required for zooming and panning.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Rick Chandler (studiochandler.com) for the use of his digital paintings (which were created using Fresco) seen in the screenshots on this page.

Screenshots:


"Gulpha Gorge landscape" painting by Rick Chandler (studiochandler.com).




"Mr. Sketchy self portrait" painting by Rick Chandler (studiochandler.com).











Trailer:

[kevglass]

Unbelieveably cool, I'm downloading

Kev

[Geeze]

Just made this with the app
Cool app! Works fine on Samsung galaxy 3.
But i would add an option to resize the canvas or atleast to flip it 90 degrees, and working in horizontal(landscape)-mode should be possible.

[seanw]

Just made this with the app
Cool app! Works fine on Samsung galaxy 3.
But i would add an option to resize the canvas or atleast to flip it 90 degrees, and working in horizontal(landscape)-mode should be possible.

Wow, that's awesome! I'm impressed by the blending between the colors seeing as there isn't a smudge tool yet. How did you find the interface? Did you make use of layers or the filters?

Landscape is a top priority feature (it's harder to add than you'd think!). I'll probably add canvas rotation when landscape mode gets added although canvas resizing will need some thought.

Thanks for trying out the app!

[Geeze]

The blending was done just using opaque brushstrokes, and actually theres an issue about that. For example if you have painted a flat dark surface and then use an opaque brush with same color on that area, it turns even darker. This makes blending edges smoothly impossible/hard with some colors.

Oh yes, i tried to make faked lens flare and noticed that its hard to paint an area with solid opaque color. Luckily it can be bypassed by (ab)using layers(new layer, paint area, set opasity, merge). Kinda hard with only 2 layers, but i managed to do that "lens flare" using that technique

[selfproclaimedhacker]

Wow this is a really cool app. Ill probably end up buying this

[seanw]

The blending was done just using opaque brushstrokes, and actually theres an issue about that. For example if you have painted a flat dark surface and then use an opaque brush with same color on that area, it turns even darker. This makes blending edges smoothly impossible/hard with some colors.

Gimp's paint tool has an "incremental" mode. Is this what you mean?

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tools-paint.html
"The Incremental check-box activates incremental mode for the tool. If it is deactivated, the maximum effect of a single stroke is determined by the opacity, and moving the brush repeatedly over the same spot will not increase the effect beyond this limit. If Incremental is active, each additional pass with the brush will increase the effect, but the opacity can't exceed the opacity set for the tool."

I went with incremental mode by default as my initial testers found this more intuitive. I'm likely to add a non-incremental mode option at some point.

Oh yes, i tried to make faked lens flare and noticed that its hard to paint an area with solid opaque color. Luckily it can be bypassed by (ab)using layers(new layer, paint area, set opasity, merge). Kinda hard with only 2 layers, but i managed to do that "lens flare" using that technique

I was going to mention that trick. Nice work!

[seanw]

Wow this is a really cool app. Ill probably end up buying this

Thanks. What device did you try it on? How did you find the interface?

[mHadar]

I'll mention a little something I've been researching that might interest you.

As of 2.3 and 3.0, android supports touch size(and pressure,though I doubt capacitive screens will have the function).Not too many devices out there support it now but they grow by the minute.

Making a version that uses such a feature will be great!I'm willing to shell more than 0.99 to an app that does it well.

up to the challenge?

[seanw]

As of 2.3 and 3.0, android supports touch size(and pressure,though I doubt capacitive screens will have the function).Not too many devices out there support it now but they grow by the minute.

Making a version that uses such a feature will be great!I'm willing to shell more than 0.99 to an app that does it well.

The Android API has included functions for returning touch pressure/size since the first release I think and it works on most devices I've tried to some degree. I'd be interested in adding pressure/size sensitivity to Fresco but I'd need to do a lot of testing to make sure it worked well on most devices.

[seanw]

New beta release! Check the original post for a list of changes.

[seanw]

This is really quite fantastic. Running it on a HTC desire here. Really interested to see where this is going.

Great! I'm open to feature requests and other suggestions if you've got anything in mind.

[rivon]

Can't install it on LG P500 (Optimus One) running Android 2.2.
I start the installation, then it shows the "loading" bar and then just "The application isn't installed".

[seanw]

Can't install it on LG P500 (Optimus One) running Android 2.2.
I start the installation, then it shows the "loading" bar and then just "The application isn't installed".

I did a search and it seems like a mysterious problem that happens on different phones from time to time. Some suggestions I've found are to uninstall the app (if it installed but won't run), free up some space on your SD card and internal memory, reboot and try again. Let me know if you're still having problems.

[johnnoz]

This is really nice! It gives Autodesk Sketchbook a run for it's money IMO.

There's one piece of critique I can give: the layers menu, well, feels like just that: a menu, not a toolbar. As such it feels like the back button should close the menu while it's up, rather then going straight to the quitting dialogue.

[Rykuth]

It ran perfectly on my LG Ally. The one comment I have is that the icon for the brush settings menu is somewhat misleading. At first I thought it was a general settings menu and I spent a little while looking for brush setting before trying that. Maybe if you had an icon with both the bush and gear together it would be more clear?

[mankoon]

I installed it on my Samsung Galaxy S. So far, so good. 

[seanw]

There's one piece of critique I can give: the layers menu, well, feels like just that: a menu, not a toolbar. As such it feels like the back button should close the menu while it's up, rather then going straight to the quitting dialogue.

Do you mean the menu that appears when you press the button that lets you add new layers or the panel that shows you the layer previews? If it's the first one, the back button should dismiss it.

[seanw]

It ran perfectly on my LG Ally. The one comment I have is that the icon for the brush settings menu is somewhat misleading. At first I thought it was a general settings menu and I spent a little while looking for brush setting before trying that. Maybe if you had an icon with both the bush and gear together it would be more clear?

I'll have a think about this. I see what you mean but for consistency the icon+gear button would need to switch appearance based on the currently selected tool.

[johnnoz]

Do you mean the menu that appears when you press the button that lets you add new layers or the panel that shows you the layer previews? If it's the first one, the back button should dismiss it.

The preview panel.