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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…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
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From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

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Samsung's Relumino Mode
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[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
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Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

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Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

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