Top 7 best iPad apps for Designers

The iPad apps for designers that work best enable creatives to work just as well as they would on a laptop. But knowing which apps you should add to make your life as a creative professional better is key, which is why we've put together this list of suggestions.

Of course, there's a lot to be said for having the best drawing apps for iPad, but as you know, there's plenty more to the life of a creative pro than dreaming up ideas on a sketchpad.

So although we do have a small number of drawing apps on our list, these really are the best iPad apps for designers to take care of all aspects of the job.

01. Affinity Designer

• Requirements: iOS 11.1 or later
• Price: $19.99/£19.99

Affinity Designer is one of the most ambitious creative apps for the iPad. Taking all of the power and precision that the desktop version is known for and migrating it to the iPad, this iteration of Affinity Designer has been specially upgraded to fit the device. Affinity Designer is perfect for any part of the workflow and boasts over 100 brushes.

02. Pixelmator

• Requirements: iOS 9.1 or later
• Price: $4.99/£4.99

Packed with image editing and enhancement tools, Pixelmator contains everything you need for adjusting assets on the go. Thanks to Drag and Drop support, users can move images and graphics between iPad and other apps easily. 

Alternatively, you can store images in the iCloud Drive and access them anywhere. By taking advantage of the latest iOS 12 technologies, Pixelmator offers best-in-class Photoshop file support, precision drawing and painting with the Apple Pencil, plus much more.

03. Trello

• Requirements: iOS 11.0 or later
• Price: Free (IAPs)

Whether you're coordinating a big design project or just trying to organize a cleaning rota, Trello is a great tool for getting stuff done and staying organized. It makes it easy to invite people to collaborate on projects, and you can create custom boards for whatever you're working on. The iPad app is optimized for iPad Pro with plenty of tweaks to take advantage of its larger screen, and if you absolutely need project updates wherever you are, there are also apps for Apple Watch and even iMessage.

04. Procreate

• Requirements: iOS 12 or later
• $9.99/£9.49

Procreate is a truly wonderful natural media app, and it's very fast – especially on more recent iPads where it can take advantage of their huge power. What's more, it's optimized for the iPad Pro, with massive, ultra-hi-definition canvases, and will work with the Apple Pencil too. Procreate has also recently had an upgrade, and now includes the much-anticipated Text tool.

05. Parallels Access

• Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later
• Price: Free (IAPs)

However good an iPad app is, sometimes you just really need to use one of your full-fat desktop packages. And while there are plenty of remote desktop apps such as TeamViewer that you can use to get to your actual desktop from your iPad, they're heavy on bandwidth and there's something not quite right about wrangling a mouse-driven interface on a touchscreen.

Parallels Access does things a bit differently, giving you full access to your desktop and using its special 'Application' technology to render your desktop apps as native apps, making them much easier to use on the go and also ensuring you can work without a fast internet connection.

06. Noteshelf

• Requirements: iOS 12.0 or later
• Price: $9.99/£9.99

If what you want is the digital equivalent of a sketchbook, rather than a canvas – somewhere to write stuff down, doodle out a few ideas, take notes in a meeting – get Noteshelf. Its ability to mix typed, audio and handwritten notes – with beautiful ink effects – annotate documents and images, and even define custom paper designs to make it easy to create, say, iPhone wireframes for sketching app designs makes it an extremely handy iPad app for designers. It pairs with a range of third-party styluses too, for pressure sensitivity and wrist rejection.

07. Adobe Comp CC

• Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later
• Price: Free

Adobe makes loads of apps for iOS, but this one is especially great on the iPad. With it, you can quickly and easily create mockups and wireframes for designs for web design, print and more, and you can export them to Creative Cloud stablemates InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop to work them up further. It's a great way to make productive use of commute time, say – though of course just staring blankly out of the window can be just as effective!