Apple’s improved Force Touch trackpad on the new 12-inch MacBook and early-2015 MacBook Pro models has pressure sensors that make possible all sorts of new interactions, among them pressure-sensitive drawing with your finger.
In OS X Yosemite, for example, you can press lightly on the trackpad for a thin stroke or harder for a thick one when marking up a Mail attachment or creating a signature for forms in Preview.
And now, a Mac application called Inklet has been refreshed with superior pressure-sensitive drawing capabilities, basically turning the Force Touch trackpad in your Mac notebook into a powerful drawing tablet.
Created by Ten One Design and billed as the first third-party app to support Force Touch technology via Apple’s new APIs, Inklet 1.6 includes new features like enhanced pressure control for Mac notebooks with a Force Touch trackpad and improved pressure response for machines with a regular Multitouch trackpad.
”This means MacBook owners with the new trackpad will enjoy enhanced, highly-accurate pressure sensitivity when drawing on the trackpad whether drawing with a stylus or with a finger,” said the firm.
Ten One Design founder Peter Skinner says the new Force Touch trackpad “aligns perfectly” with his vision for Inklet and mobile drawing without the hassle of external tablets.
The app features advanced palm rejection technology which detects unwanted trackpad touches so you don’t have to worry about resting your palm on the trackpad as you draw.
The Montclair, New Jersey developer said its app adds Force Touch pressure-sensitive drawing in all Mac apps that support OS X’s Ink technology, such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture and Illustrator.
After install the Inklet plug-in on your machine, you’ll see a new icon in your Mac’s menu bar. Click it to reveal various options and tools for use in third-party applications for graphics artists, designers and illustrators.
The app also supports hotkey shortcuts to streamline the drawing process, and Ten One Design’s Autograph, a signature-capture application for Macs with a trackpad, by incorporate pressure data along with velocity data for smooth signatures.
”Even though Inklet has always been capable of determining stylus pressure, this update makes measuring pressure simpler and more reliable,” developers said.
The Inklet app is available for $24.95 from the Ten One Design website (a free demo version is available). A version with its Pogo capacitive touch screen stylus included will set you back $34.90.
If you’d rather use your iPad’s Retina screen as a professional graphics tablet for your Mac, check out Air Stylus and Astropad.
Source: Ten One Design