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Under pressure: How Pencil will become even more life-like in iOS 8

Just looking at the iPad, you’d think it would make a great artist’s platform. But notoriously missing from the iPad’s accessory arsenal has been a stylus that would give an artist or calligrapher the detailed control they needed to execute fine lines one moment and broad strokes the next. Then came Pencil, which, along with a companion app called Paper, transformed the iPad from screen with which one could simply view art, to a tool used to make it. Apple’s tablet hasn’t been the same since.

Related: How Paper and Pencil transformed the iPad from a window to a canvas

As fate would have it, we literally stumbled into Pencil creator Georg Petschnigg in the press room at IFA 2014 in Berlin, Germany, and he was gracious enough to show us what the Pencil looks like in action, and explain what new features and functionality will come with the release of iOS 8. You can see it for yourself in the video above. 

Related: Everything we know about iOS 8

The combination of Pencil and Paper let artists of any skill level draw, sketch, outline, write, and paint on a virtual canvas.

You can find Pencil, in both Graphite and Walnut finishes, on sale at Amazon.

Caleb Denison
Digital Trends Editor at Large Caleb Denison is a sought-after writer, speaker, and television correspondent with unmatched…
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