Dragon Dictation for iPad

Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard.

With Dragon Dictation you can also update your Facebook status, send notes and reminders to yourself, or Tweet to the world….all using your voice. So when you’re on-the-go, stop typing and start speaking – from short text messages to longer email messages, and anything in between.

The new version of this app capitalizes on the larger screen size and adds a new “Dragon Dictation Notes” feature. This feature means that dictated text is quickly saved and can be viewed and managed at a later date. This is not currently possible on the iPhone.

This version of the application can be used in either portrait or landscape mode so that end-users now have the option to use it in a way that is most comfortable and efficient for them. Dragon Dictation is one of the most interesting apps for iPad.

SketchBook Pro for iPad

In truth, I’m not much of a drawer or sketcher, I can manage a stick figure if I need to, but overall I am drawing challenged. That being said, Sketchbook Pro in the right hands is a powerful tool. In my hands it has its uses as well.

The first thing that I appreciate as a photographer and re-toucher about Sketchbook is that it has layers. This is a huge asset in general because you can turn them on and off as you work. The second is the brush palette is really robust. It has most of Adobe Photoshop’s best qualities for making just the right brush to paint with; Radius, Opacity, Spacing, and Feather. Plus you get two options for your color picker, a standard swatch grid of 30 colors.

Also there’s a Painter style picker circle with a Saturation diamond in the center. Below that are your HSB sliders and RGB values. Most important of all, there’s an actual eye-dropper for picking tones directly from your image!

For the true artist and designers, the Brush palette also contains options for Fine Tin Pencil, four Round Tip Pencils, two kinds of Airbrush, Paintbucket, Felt Tip pen, Rollerball, Eraser, Marker, and another 45 extra Brushes, plus 15 leaf/flower patterns.

The actual user interface consists of single, double and triple finger swipes which control your painting, zoom, undo and redo, brush size, and palette activation. Pretty simple to learn even without a manual, but the first time you launch, Sketchbook gives you a short tutorial before letting you at the program.

Features:

• Full Screen work space with support for any device orientation
• Canvas size: 1024 x 768

Multi-touch Interface:

• Two finger pan & zoom navigation with 2500% zoom
• Three finger tap for controls
• Three finger swipe gestures for quick access

High quality brushes and tools:

• Professional grade paint engine delivers smooth and precise brush strokes
• 75 preset brushes, including pencils, pens, markers, natural media and photo brushes
• New Nature & Stamp brushes
• Flood fill and smear tool
• Completely customizable brush settings for each brush
• Draw styles for creating straight lines, rectangles, and circles
• Synthetic pressure sensitivity (brush fade-off)
• 10 levels of undo and redo (Quick Access: three finger swipe left and right)
• Dynamic symmetric drawing
• Quick Access: Three finger swipe down on canvas

Layers:

• 6 Layers allowing ease of editing and control
• Import layers from Photo Library
• Duplicate, Merge and Reorder Layers
• Move, scale, and rotate layers interactively using

Multi-Touch:

• Toggle visibility and adjust Layer Opacity
• Quick Access: Three finger swipe up on canvas

Gallery:

• Store and view work-in-progress
• Export to Photo Library
• E-mail images
• Export as a layered PSD file
• Browse images in full screen mode

Colors:

• Color Wheel with HSB and RBG color space
• Customizable Color Swatches
• Eye-dropper color selection
• Erase color chip to convert any brush into custom eraser
• Stay Connected:
• Built in SketchBook News panel for live info about Sketching events and announcements

Visual help pages
Whistle Phone and Photogene iPad Applications.

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