Leave a Review Paper by WeTransfer
DANGER: UPDATE BUG YOU LOSE ALL YOUR CONTENT
I have been dealing with Paper’s support team, all my journals are gone. The software AUTOMATICALLY updated on its own, when I opened this past week and all my content is wiped. My pages are there, but only a squiggly line icon is in the place of two years of art. I bought their Pen\ when it came out, bought the app of course. Their “engineers” took a look at the logs from my app? Say what? SO - Their response was oops, sorry, yeah that’s happened to a “few” users. It is shamefully irresponsible of them not to send out an email alert to all their existing customers and warn them TODAY, YOU COULD LOSE ALL YOUR WORK due to our auto update. SO BACK UP, screen shot, whatever.
I am Burning my 53 stylus pen, and deleting this garbage app from this irresponsible organization. The loss has caused me undo mental and emotional distress, the personal content that was lost due to their gross negligence was very valuable to my business. SAVE YOUR MONEY, YOUR WORK, AND YOURSELF. Switching to Bamboo from WACOM, at least they are a real oraganization. Or even iOS 11 NOTES from APPLE, ANYTHING BUT A 53 product. THE WORST!!!!!Show lessLook A Guy
Potentially, the best writing app.
This app is perfect for engineering notes. Especially, with the grid paper and the geometry correction setting, it is so easy to graph simple functions. It has a lot of great features such as fill in paint, photo add on, cut and paste, zoom in/ out, an eraser among other things. But it does not have great palm rejection since major update. It does not allow to add more than one picture or a picture and a graph. Cannot easily add pages while in notebook setting. You first need to zoom out then add then zoom back into the notebook to write. It would be neat to turn pages with the slide of the finger, also move notebooks around. Eraser takes off a really large area. Pencil disconnects very often (Could just be my pencil). But I stay with the app because these are manageable changes and it is still a great app with major potential. One of my favorite apps to use.Show lessWaterbug413
Use this app every day but..
When I first got my iPad this was the first app I downloaded, its been one of my favorites through art school and beyond, it even allowed me to start a web comic! But the last two updates have been frustrating for me. I finally figured out how to get around my problems on the update in about December, just in time for a new update yesterday which is causing me more problems. My biggest problem right now is that the marker tool, which I use for most of my coloring, now stays at a larger size even when you zoom in. I'm one of those people who draws details, and coloring in those details has been made much harder with the larger marker size. I'm having the same problems with the eraser.
If there's a way around this problem, I'm all ears, I have a lot of comic left to draw!
(Using an Apple Pencil and iPad Pro)Show lessLibrarian93
Shame on 53
EDIT: I have gotten access restored to the tools I purchased previously and it looks like the people at 53 have taken some of the negative feedback to heart and made some tweaks to the new setup and options that make it a much more enjoyable experience again. I have updated my rating to reflect the current situation which is significantly improved from my original review.
I have been a user of Paper for years and gladly paid to unlock the extra tools they introduced. This new version moves all those tools into the new “pro” tier, so despite the fact that I already paid to access them I now no longer have access to them unless I pay again- this time on an ongoing subscription basis. No thank you! 53 has essentially reverted Paper back to the original style that customers preferred but taken away the tools we paid for back when we already had this same version. What a waste. I won’t be making the mistake of giving them any more money when there are so many great alternatives!Show lessshempzilla
Developer Response
Hello shempzilla, thanks for sharing your feedback. Have you signed into your Paper account? Once you do so all your former tools will be restored! If have additional questions please send an email to support@fiftythree.com and we'll do our best to help!Skeuomorphism taken too far - lost functionality in latest update
I like the tool palette, and the experience of actually sketching is very nice, but the change to how journals are navigated between is frustratingly bad. Before, there was a list on the left and I could just jump to the journal (notebook? I forget what they’re called) that I wanted. Now that list is no longer an option. Instead I have to swipe through these big, unlabeled pictures of books to find the one I want. Not only is this laborious and a completely unnecessary step backward in efficiency, but the titles of the journals are not even on the pictures of the books themselves; you have to wait until each one is front and center and then the name pops up on the top. This makes a bad situation even worse - because the right journal is even harder to locate. If you were going fully skeuomorphic you’d think you could at least put the title of the journal on the cover of the picture of the journal? Ug. Sorry for ranting. I want to love this app, but this was just a totally boneheaded move. Please bring back the list mode, and if you must develop the UI in a skeuomorphic direction, please try to do so without making it harder to use efficiently.Show lessmyoozishan
I used to love this app.
They say change is good. Well not always. I get the need to make money. And I don’t mind paying once for an app when I find value in it.
The problem with what the creators of paper have done is the equivalent of giving you the keys to the car with all that entails for years and then suddenly said “Oh by the way you can’t use the radio the air conditioning or roll down the windows unless you pay subscription to use them.”
But what’s even worse is they taken away all of fun and useful features with the explanation that you must upgrade to the pro subscription but it’s under development. Meanwhile, you’re stuck holding something that is not as useful as it used to be. Excuse me I have to subscribe to put a cover on my journal. That one seems a little petty.
I have been using Paper for some time and found it to be a very useful design tool. I even went so far as getting the pencil to use with the app. But that’s stopped working properly and I can’t find any way to upgrade its firmware. The support page is any thing but support.
When and if 53 rolls out their subscription service. I will delete the app off my iPad and discontinue use. Their pencil has been sitting in a Desk drawer for sometime now because I can’t use it properly. There’s $35 down the drain. I’ve been migrating to other apps from Adobe and Autodesk. I keep hoping that 53 will get their act together.Show lessVbrwn
Disappointed
When I first got an iPad, Paper was the first app I downloaded. I wasn’t the best at it, but I had a lot of fun just playing with it. Mix was great too — just seeing new art was kinda fun! Think kit was a great addition, but then a lot of weird new features got added. I spent some time away from iPads in general until now, when I re-downloaded Paper, grabbed my Pencil (by 53), and tried to use it again.
It’s like everything is crazy now. I mean really. I have access to the think kit tools automatically, but some things have badges for pro, and apparently I can still subscribe. I tried drawing lines with arrows. It’s a basic feature that’s listed on the website, but upon further inspection, that’s only for Paper pro and legacy users. But wait, another support article says that diagram arrow tools aren’t supported yet. After upgrading to pro, every time I cut, I get a “copied” notification. Can’t figure out paste though. No help articles for that.
Everything here says rushed. Missing tool items. Poor help menus to explain what’s changed. Poor support pages that erroneously list features that don’t exist anymore. Poor distinction between what’s outdated, what promotional material no longer applies, and what this app even does anymore.Show lessKazutoKirigaya
BIG step in the right direction!
I have to emphatically salute 53 for their courage and humility.
I have almost never seen any program in any category on any platform go back and correct UI mistakes that were once presented as improvements. I am so happy that 53 seems to have gotten a clue about where they went wrong. This app is back on my devices now after a long time off of them.
The return of the journal format and overall simplicity is great. Also great is the dropping of all the over-hyping of really stunningly unexceptional features (oooo it can make bullet lists, stop the presses).
Now if only they’d re-implement Mix. It seems like everybody and their brother is trying to add social sharing features to drawing apps, but 53’s old card-based Mix system was the best I’ve ever seen, in that it made sharing and adapting each other’s art really easy and enjoyable and natural. I used to spend hours with my daughter looking at different ways that images had been mixed, and voting on which mixes we liked the best. Plus swiping the cards in a stack of Mixes was just plain fun.
I’d say it’s almost restored to its former glory, and while I suspect the return of Mix is just too much to hope for, I’m happy with the prayers that have been answered.
Used to rate it one star, now am rating it four, if against all odds Mix returns, it’s going all the way up to five.Show lessHagcrcusnvkg
Version 4 disappoints enough to leave Paper
I have been using Paper by FiftyThree since its initial release, to sketch ideas for creating icons or other art, but was soured by their rewrite of the app in version 4, with many necessary features omitted until they can get around to adding them to the rewritten version, and a broken workflow and UI for their copy / paste function that I would use constantly in all previous versions but now no longer want to touch. I have explained to them how this function is broken, but no fixes have been released.
Fortunately, a major revision of the Concepts app, version 5, was released during this frustrating period. I had tried version 4 out but didn't catch their vision—until I spend some time learning Concepts 5. I have been hooked by 1) infinite canvas, 2) multiple layers, and 3) precision shape creation—none of which Paper has, but which I need. The learning curve for Concepts is slightly higher than for Paper, but the app is so much more useful to me, with just enough UI to cue you in to what it can do, and the ability to rearrange or minimize the UI to support what you're doing at the moment.Show lessR the P
My Go To for Sketching on an IPad. *Frustrating changes, though.
January 2018 update
The old capabilities from the original version (customizable sketchbook covers and background images) are back. Yay! And it also turns out the menu to save, move and delete images is only available in book view. Annoying if you don't know that.
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December 1, 2017 Update
I wish they would stop changing the format. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Now I have to relearn how to do everything that had become second nature to me, again. This is about the fifth time they've rehauled the interface. Though I do appreciate the addition of more customizable palettes, it's just frustrating that they moved everything around. Again. UPDATE: Right now if you import an image into a file you cannot edit or even remove it, but the latest update says they're working on it.
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I've had this app for a couple years now and the creators are always making it better. The controls are easy to learn and super useful. I am a huge fan of the color mixer.
If you like to draw or write by hand I definitely recommend this. Also, I use a stylus with a plastic tip so that it feels like I'm using a pen. Much better than using my finger. If I ever get their stylus I'll review that as well.Show lessNova7o9
