Astropad Studio is our award-wining drawing software that turns your iPad into a fully customizable drawing tablet. We first launched Astropad for Mac in 2015; now, we’re bringing Astropad to the Windows creative community. Our beta is still a work in progress, but we’re excited to hear what you think of it! Astropad Studio is the ultimate wireless drawing tablet, designed for the most demanding creative work. With complete workspace customization, Studio allows artists to work faster and more efficiently, with the freedom to work in the studio, at home, or on-the-go. Astropad has released a pro version called Astropad Studio that turns your iPad into a drawing tablet for your Mac. What’s new, how does it rank against what. To use Astropad Studio you will need to make a user account. Creating a user account is easy, by entering your email and making a password. Your user license for Astropad Studio will be tied to this account. To enter Studio, log in to your user account through your iPad.

Astropad is an application that turns your iPad into a graphics tablet for your Mac. I first heard about it on The Creative Pep Talk Podcast a few years ago, and, after buying an iPad Pro, I decided to give it a try. At the time I was using a Wacom Intuos 4, a pro-level graphics tablet. While it had many great qualities, it lacked what I feel is the most important part of a tablet — a screen that allows you to see what you’re drawing on! I had been thinking about getting a Cintiq but they were so expensive. With a thirty day free trial available for Astropad Studio, I decided to give that a whirl. To my surprise and delight, it worked perfectly. There was no turning back, and the name Wacom scarcely crossed my mind again.

Now, one of the most unanswered questions about Astropad at the time was, really, what was the difference between their Studio and Standard versions, and given these, which ones did I truly need?

Studio is a $79 US subscription, while Standard is a one-time purchase of $29.99 US. I had hoped the Standard version would be everything I needed, but not having used a screen based graphics tablet before, I couldn’t tell at the time.

I can’t remember, but I recall not really being able to find out, what, really, do you get with the steep increase in cost going up to Studio. Thankfully, today, they’ve delineated the differences quite neatly on their site. In any event, I thought I’d take it on myself to find out and summarize it for you as best I can.

Now before I get into the comparison, I will say what I ended up with and why. Because Astropad Studio has a 30 day free trial and Standard doesn’t, it was simply less risky to try the pro version. In order to try the Standard version, I would have had to buy it. Buy to try does not line up with my philosophy, so, admittedly, I have never used it. Everything I know about Standard comes from my research — which I mostly conduced on the App Store, reading the details on the Astropad Studio and Astropad Standard pages there.

So what is the difference between Astropad Studio and Astropad Standard?

As you might have guessed, the main differences are in features, performance, and pricing. Studio has more customizability and faster performance, and is optimized to meet the demands of professional illustrators. As mentioned, Studio is a $79/year subscription, but you can try it for 30 days for free. Standard does almost everything Studio can do but has less customizability and fewer features that may matter to pros, including speed/performance and colour correction. Astropad Studio costs a one time price of $29.99, but there is no trial period available.

ASTROPAD STUDIO FEATURES

• US $79 per year, subscription based

• 30 day free trial period

• Crystal clear and ultra fast

• Gesture shortcut customization

• Keyboard support

• Customizable pressure curves

• Magic Gestures - create your own gesture shortcuts with touch-pencil combinations

• Shortcut Sets

• Unlimited upgrades

• Wifi and USB connection

• Pressure sensitive

• Designed exclusively for Apple Pencil

• Color Corrected - true to your source material

• iPad iOS 91. Or later; iPad mini 2(2013+), iPad Air (2013+), iPad Pro (2016+), iPad 5th gen (2017+) - Need Mac OS X 10.11 or later

• Windows Support Coming Soon

• Optimized for iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

• Priority creative pro support

• Unlimited updates

• Syncing of settings across devices

ASTROPAD STANDARD FEATURES

• US $29.99 one time purchase

• No trial period — you have to buy to try

• Photo print for mac. Wifi and USB connection

• Pressure sensitive

• Supports Apple Pencil

• Customizable shortcuts

• Works with iPad iOS 9.1 or later, iPad mini 2 (2013+), iPad Air (2013+), iPad 5th gen (2017+)

• Need Mac OS X 10.11 or later

• Windows Support Coming Soon

• Continual updates to improve performance

The Verdict

Ultimately, the main advantages of Studio over Standard seem to be in the customizability, performance and colour correction. As a professional illustrator, you will likely use this tool for hours every day. That means you will eventually become a “power user”, relying on quick shortcuts and magic gestures to perform repetitive tasks. It never occurred to me until doing this research that Astropad Studio also creates colour consistency between your Mac and iPad, which, when you think about it, is pretty important!

If price alone is getting you hung up, then it might help to remember that, as a pro, you can write off your app subscriptions for tax purposes. It also might help to remember that it’s hard to put a price tag on tools that make your job easier and the quality of your work better (both of which are true for me). For the price of a monthly Netflix subscription, this tool pays for itself many times each day.

If you just want to play around with the essential features of a visual graphics tablet, and you are not a professional (getting paid to illustrate) just yet, it may be better to just go with Standard. It’s a bit of a toss-up. One one side, it might be all you need, and you dodge having yet another expensive subscription. On the other side, perhaps you end up wanting to try Studio after a while anyway, and you’ve “wasted” your thirty bucks. That being said, if you are in no hurry and can endure trying Standard for 3 months, and then upgrade to the subscription based Pro after that, your initial investment will have been less than what it would have cost to subscribe to Studio in that same time. That’s one way of looking at it.

Either way, after 3 years of subscribing, my overall cost still doesn’t even amount to half of what it would cost me to get a Cintiq. So there’s that!

Astropad has been a HUGE game-changer for me, and I’m grateful to the company for providing such a helpful app. They didn’t have to, and so far, no one else has stepped up to the plate.

Except Apple themselves, but that’s a different story! If you’re wondering how Sidecar compares to Astropad, this article from Astropad themselves gives some insight.

For more on how I use Astropad, please check out my YouTube video on the topic.

Clip Studio Paint is a great drawing program to use with Astropad. It’s versatile for both illustration and creating publisher-ready comics, with features that accommodate every step of the comic-making process: layouts, perspective rulers, sketching, inking, coloring, and captions.

In this quick, step-by-step guide, we’ll help you organize an efficient workspace for using Clip Studio Paint together with Astropad. For the best experience, we recommend the latest Clip Studio Paint version.

Arranging panels

It’s easy to arrange and resize Clip Studio Paint’s tool panels. Just click the top of a panel, and drag it anywhere on screen. They can be resized at the sides and corners, or completely hidden to the side of the screen.

Any type of panel arrangement works with Astropad Studio, since the sidebar can be placed to the left or right side of the iPad screen, or hidden by tapping the Astro-red ring button. All you need is your finger to drag the sidebar and ring button to either side of your iPad.

We recommend having at least the following panels arranged on your screen:

• Subtool [brush]
• Tool property (for easy stroke adjustments)
• Color wheel
• Layers

Materials Panel: If you plan to use features such as 3D posing, screen tones, and textures, you will want to keep the Materials Panel close by. We suggest that you leave the collapsable Materials toolbar on your screen near the color palette or main toolbar so that you can easily access features without taking up a lot of screen space.

Setting menu shortcuts

Astropad Studio’s shortcuts are preset to default, but these can be changed to better accommodate how you use Clip Studio Paint. In Astropad Studio’s Workspace sidebar, towards the bottom, tap Edit Shortcuts. You can fully edit and rename shortcuts for the sidebar. When you’re done, tap Workspace to see all your newly added shortcut commands.

We recommend placing your most used shortcuts in the sidebar. It’s completely customizable, so add whatever works best with your workflow!

Recommended shortcuts for Astropad’s sidebar:

• P : pencil/ pen
• M : marquee
• G : gradients
• J : blending tool

Astropad Studio Vs Luna Display

Suggested Magic Gestures:

• Hover
• Eraser
• Option
• Shift
• Undo
• Redo

Quick Keys

Want command keys, but more space? For easy access to main command keys: Command, Option, Control, and Shift; use Astropad’s on screen Quick Keys. Enable and disable this feature by going near the very bottom of the Shortcuts Sidebar.

On Screen keyboard

Here to help with your speech bubble needs, Astropad Studio has a full on-screen keyboard. In the Shortcuts sidebar, tap Keyboard to reveal it; or tap the button from Quick Keys.

Touch gesture Zoom and Panning

Astropad’s touch gestures, panning and zoom are supported in Clip Studio Paint. Just like using a Mac trackpad — with two fingers, pinch to zoom, and place together to pan on your iPad. This way, you won’t need to keep the scrollbars in view when you set up your ideal workspace.

Working with Astropad Studio, two-fingers canvas rotation is an additional touch gesture to utilize.

Astropad Studio Windows

If you would like to learn more about setting up your brushes and pen pressure in Clip Studio Paint, take a look at our post here: How to use brushes in Clip Studio Paint with Astropad.

Astropad Studio Review

And check out our step-by-step video tutorials for making a comic book page in Clip Studio Paint: clipstudiotutorials.com