iDraw vs. Sketch

Haven't used iDraw, but I have a hard time analyzing the price of any app that falls under 100 bucks.

You might check out Inkscape, which is free.

Well, you get what you pay for most of the time

I use iDraw (have it for Mac & iPad) but do not have Sketch, so I can't compare them. But I can tell you that iDraw has a great UI and one of the best user manuals I've seen. iDraw's simplicity is deceptive, the program has a great deal of depth. The devs are very responsive and always working on improvements. If you need help, they reply to Facebook questions quickly. To me, iDraw is worth a lot more than $24.99.

I have used both iDraw and Illustrator. Tried iDraw for 30 days free trial and use Illustrator on a daily basis. Have never used Sketch.

Think of iDraw as the sort of app you could use for a first draft and Illustrator for the rest of the heavy lifting. iDraw’s & Illustrator both have clean interfaces to work with. For the average person iDraw is a perfect for basic-to-complex vector work.

Cost difference alone should dictate which way most people will go. If it was for personal use, iDraw would certainly be my first choice. Illustrator if I was going to use it more on a professional level.

samo1215 said:

CrickettGrrrl, thanks for the response, I really appreciate the input.

I was wondering, have you used Illustrator before and if so, can you tell me how iDraw stacks up to that? Obviously, I expect iDraw to be missing a few bells and whistles but any insight you can give me on the difference between the two programs would be helpful.

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I've used Illustrator in limited ways in the past and am using it on a revived work project currently. Frankly, it was quite intimidating in the beginning and really confounding compared to Photoshop. I couldn't stand it, it seemed like torture. Then I started using iDraw to do VectorTutsplus tutorials and absolutely loved iDraw. It was so easy to use. And iDraw helped me understand a lot stuff with Illustrator, ---epiphany moments! So I came to really appreciate the power of AI and don't feel so frustrated using it now.

I recently downloaded Inkscape and have been playing around with it a little bit. I'm having a bit of difficulty with the interface yet I still quite like Inkscape and don't want to give up with it. Each of these programs is different, but that's okay. For instance, I really like the bitmap to vector tracing in Inkscape more than in Illustrator.

Has anyone compared iDraw to Vectormator? (Pixelmators vector program which a lot of people don't know about). I forget the keyboard shortcut but if you're in Pixelmator and you hit it it turns into Vectormator which is full of drawing tools.

I like iDraw. The UI is straightforward and intuitive. One thing I found very handy was that I could work on a drawing on either the iPad or the Mac.

chrono1081 said:

Has anyone compared iDraw to Vectormator? (Pixelmators vector program which a lot of people don't know about). I forget the keyboard shortcut but if you're in Pixelmator and you hit it it turns into Vectormator which is full of drawing tools.

Click to expand...

The secret handshake for Vectormator is Command+Shift+V.
(Sadly no sound effects... ) And press the same to get back to the regular setup.

Yes, I use the vector shapes & pen tool in Pixelmator all the time now, it's really terrific to use those along with all the effects and raster tools too. So if I've got an idea I want to work up quickly --it's a tough choice between iDraw and Pixelmator sometimes but Pixelmator definitely has the edge with all the other tools. However, it's very different from the typical vector/boolean approach and I can see how people who are really clever with Illustrator could get frustrated with it.

Off Topic but...

One difference about Vectormator and iDraw is the way it handles Illustrator files (.AI mostlty but .EPS and .PDF files). IFIK, iDraw do a better job for editing vector graphics and exporting them in .PDF (can't tell about Sketch 'tho).

I use both iDraw (and I'm very pleased) and Pixelmator (very pleased too). Funny but I tend to forget about using Vectormator while in Pixelmator (I guess my old habit of switching app - with different purposes for different job - is strong).

Maybe it's time to force myself to use more of that Vectormator!



Now, back to Today's topic

I glad that so many people have commented on iDraw. I have been looking for an alternative to Illustrator ever since Adobe announced their "pay for life" subscription plans. I have been an Illustrator user since version 4 and it is my favorite graphics application. While it is my favorite, there is a lot of bloat to it. There are so many "extras" that they added over the years just to say that they added something new but it didn't really add any value to it. I would be happy with a stripped down version of it and from what I read, that is what iDraw is. I don't need all the export and import options that Illustrator has, and I don't need the silly Photoshop filters (who uses raster filters in a vector program anyways).

CrickettGrrrl, how would you compare the pen tool in iDraw to the pen tool in Illustrator. The reason I ask is, I have used Corel Draw, Freehand and Inkscape over the years and while they are all powerful, I didn't like the pen tool in any of those applications. They just felt clunky compared to Illustrator's pen tool.

I do like Inkscape, it is a very powerful program (one that rivals Illustrator and in some cases is better than Illustrator) but the interface is just terrible. I will continue to use my current version of Illustrator as long as I can but I'm hoping to find a replacement soon. Inkscape will work for me if I have to but I would rather use an application with a little more refined interface.

MechaSpanky said:

CrickettGrrrl, how would you compare the pen tool in iDraw to the pen tool in Illustrator. The reason I ask is, I have used Corel Draw, Freehand and Inkscape over the years and while they are all powerful, I didn't like the pen tool in any of those applications. They just felt clunky compared to Illustrator's pen tool.

Click to expand...

I'm definitely not an Illustrator maven, although I hope to be. But I think I know what you mean. Using the pen tool in Illustrator has a crispness or precision to it. I haven't used Corel Draw or Freehand so I can't compare, but iDraw's pen tool is a bit closer to that crispness than Pixelmator's for sure. Inkscape's interface is quite different so it adds some baggage to pen tool manipulation.

I recently had to work up someone's logo in vector quickly and I tried it with both Inkscape & iDraw. Inkscape would have saved me time since I was going to use it anyway to convert the logo into a font glyph, but I gave up, whipped it out in iDraw then imported it into Inkscape to make the glyph. I have to use my Snow Leopard partition to use Illustrator (CS2) so that makes things more ponderous, switching vector files between programs and I use AI less frequently.

Sketch has a lot of marketing and goodies for "No More Adobe Graphic Designers" Fishing but iDraw feels more productive and useful. Sometime I stop working on Sketch and continue with iDraw. At the end I would always use iDraw. If you come from a long design old school road like me you will understand why I love iDraw so much: it feels like Aldus Freehand. It's fun using it like the good old times!

I've become disillusioned with the direction of Sketch...well mainly the company. They hiked the price of Sketch 3 significantly and gave no discount to owners of Sketch 2 even though it didn't seem to offer that much more.

As it stands iDraw is less than one third the price of Sketch ($25 vs $80 US) and probably offers more. I didn't mind Sketch but its vector drawing tool was quite frustrating to use.

So to me, Bohemian Coding and Sketch became way too arrogant by pushing the price up so much when there's really good and much cheaper competition.

I think I'll take the plunge and see how iDraw compares. I'm not going to be suckered in to paying $80-100 for minor new updates to Sketch every year or so. I fully expect that's what the company intends to do now.

I wonder if Adobe plans to launch Illustrator for iPad one day.
I'm playing around with ink scape. But as a professional, I'm use to Illustrator.

I don't see Sketch as a replacement for illustrator... it is a program for UX, and an awesome one at that... asset export and slicing are amazing. If you are looking for a tool to replace Photoshop for doing web/interface comps, sketch is a wonderful way to move towards working resolution free.