# FocalPaint — mark-making machine

> Realistic paint simulation and custom brush creation tool. (iPhone/iPad app by brien dieterle.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/focalpaint/id1532688085 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [brien dieterle](https://appshunter.io/developer/1532688087)
- Category: Graphics & Design, Entertainment
- Price: $4.99 with in-app purchases
- Rating: 4.20/5 from 13 App Store ratings · 14 written reviews indexed
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 18.6 · 557 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2022-10-17
- Data updated: 2026-08-15
- Monetization: paid
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/focalpaint/id1532688085/reviews.md

## What is FocalPaint?

FocalPaint's unique brush engine simulates thick paint and real pigment mixing with accurate physics models.

Features:
- Realistic color blending behaves like real paint!
- Real canvas texture and paint thickness
- Transparent Ink simulation
- Open Source GPU shader code library for reference and customization
- Write your own custom brush with Metal GPU or Javascript code
- Write your own custom layer modes with Metal GPU code
- Apple Pencil Pro support with hover
- 16 channel "spectral" color model (256 bits per pixel)
- Wide color gamut (P3)

Please note: Apple A12 GPU or newer is required

Terms of Use:
https://www.focalpaint.com/p/terms-of-use.html

Privacy Policy:
https://www.focalpaint.com/p/privacy.html

Special Thanks to:

Scott Allen Burns
Troy James Sobotka & Friends
colour-science.org python library
MyPaint painting software team
Anna Timm (@anti-art)

## Key features

- Realistic paint and pigment mixing
- Custom brush and layer creation
- Transparent ink simulation
- Apple Pencil Pro support
- Spectral color model
- Open source shader code library

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: $4.99.

**One-time purchases**

| Purchase | Price | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Generous Tip | $0.99 | one-time |
| Huge Tip | $9.99 | one-time |
| Big Tip | $4.99 | one-time |


## Recent user reviews (10 of 14)

All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/focalpaint/id1532688085/reviews.md

### 5/5 — Love this app

*2026-06-09*

Looking forward to its development and. Success.

### 5/5 — Nothing else like it

*2026-05-03*

I love having an app that I can approach like I’m painting traditionally. I would encourage anyone from a traditional painting background to give it a try.

### 5/5 — i wish more apps were like yours

*2025-10-21*

This app is awesome!! its sorta like a physical-modelling painting app that still feels digital in an endearing way. some very unpredictable or rather unexpected behaviors in some tools. ui is kinda clunky and confusing, some buttons not so responsive and it gets laggy and buggy now and then but i love the concept, i love the execution, i love it! i wish u would never leave this behind and i hope i get to see it bloom into a flushed out mature app some day

**Developer response:** Thank you! That was such a thoughtful and kind review. I hope to find more time to work on this app in the near future and rework a lot of the UI and simplify things.

### 1/5 — Caused my iPad to shut down

*2025-07-25*

Okay, this is an interesting app. It's a tweaker's delight (if you're a person who spends days tweaking the sound of a synthesizer but never actually make music, this is the art app for you).…The brush settings are amazing, in an overwhelming tech way. Color mixing here is wonderful, maybe better than Adobe Fresco's live brushes.…The canvas size is small. I tried creating a large one and that caused not only the app but my device to shut down. As soon as I rebooted I deleted the app. Bummer. So much potential. Great ideas. Someone else needs to get involved with the development to make this a useful painting app.

**Developer response:** Thank you, this is the most flattering 1 star review I could hope for!  Your feedback helps!  Creating huge textures can be a problem for ipadOS.  I’ll try to prevent that!  The next version, 3.8, will set a maximum size of 25 megapixels

### 5/5 — This app has a lot of potential.

*2025-04-01*

I use M2 ipad pro 12.9
To the developer, I want to see this app mature cand succeed. I would have given you a million dollars if i could. I would want this app to be in my company. But pressently im a poor bastard student who is looking to dropout anytime now and build my business.

Keep up the good work.

### 5/5 — Unique and color-accurate app from an indie developer

*2024-09-12*

This app is absolutely a labor of love! I am a programmer who likes to paint and also works in the computer graphics field. I happened upon this app in the first place through a blog post about technical programming concepts and how to program light physics. Any one star reviews you see should be taken with a grain of salt; there are no apps I know of that would do accurate CMYK colors using Apple’s underlying graphics APIs, enabling the ability (like procreate) to make custom shaders and brushes. The user experience is pretty good all things considered, and might have a couple bugs to iron out (which is inevitable when you code an app from scratch as a personal project and not have the teams of resources that Adobe has). 10/10 would recommend to try out.

### 1/5 — WHY??

*2024-08-31*

The brushes don’t work. I’m deleting it.

**Developer response:** Sorry about that, it works better on iPad rather than iPhone unfortunately. But the brushes should at least work.  Can you describe what was happening?

### 5/5 — Fantastic- but,,

*2024-04-05*

/why/ does it interrupt one’s drawing every time the canvas is flipped - that unskippable pause and full screen grey out - :(  - no option to turn it off. 
- 
Other: not able to set eraser to a different brush then what is selected for drawing & painting - wanting charcoal texture eraser for oil and vice versa 
-
Accessibility: high contrast mode - it’s hard to tell sometimes what’s being clicked out the change in hues is so fine 
-
Good work with this - your brush engine is chef kiss - some tweaks with flow improvement could make this a main drawing app for us

### 5/5 — Awesome

*2024-03-11, version 2.6.3*

Paint App
Heavy Rebelle vibez but its own thing
Love it

### 5/5 — Love the originality and uniqueness of this app!

*2024-01-30*

I am just playing around with it and I’m not even sure how I stumbled upon it but since it was free to download and I thought why not? And I’m super impressed! It is not your average drawing/painting app. It’s very minimalistic but the tools are impressive. There are multiple color picker options meaning multiple ways to choose whatever color which I found was super unique and I played around with that alone for a good 5 minutes. I love that you can save in very high quality. The background/textures that you choose from are fine and I like that you can customize how your strokes interact with the canvas texture you have set as the background. I do wish I could save without a background/paper texture. For nearly all the digital art I do, I always save in full transparency PNG format and I can’t seem to do that here so that’s really the main qualm I have and it’s a big one, for me at least. I couldn’t even get a perfect white paper background no matter how hard I tried. They were all off white and so I uploaded a picture of my own to use but still not great as I had to crop and edit it down just for it to be able to load into the program but anyways, now I’m just rambling. I will continue to play with it. I hope they don’t let it go to waste although I know developing and maintaining an app can be costly. All in all, I would definitely recommend giving this a try, especially if you’re a traditional artist and want more of a ‘realistic’ look or feel. I hope they can keep up with this app, the developers have done great 👍 😊

## Frequently asked questions about FocalPaint

### What makes FocalPaint's brush engine unique?

FocalPaint's brush engine simulates thick paint and real pigment mixing with accurate physics models, offering realistic color blending and canvas texture.

### Can I create my own brushes in FocalPaint?

Yes, you can write your own custom brushes using Metal GPU or Javascript code, and even customize layer modes with Metal GPU code.

### What are the system requirements for FocalPaint?

An Apple A12 GPU or newer is required to run FocalPaint. It is available on iPhone and iPad.

### Does FocalPaint support Apple Pencil Pro?

Yes, FocalPaint offers Apple Pencil Pro support, including hover functionality for enhanced precision.

### What is the age rating for FocalPaint?

FocalPaint has an age rating of 4+, making it suitable for a wide range of users.

### How often is FocalPaint updated?

The latest version is 4.0.4, and the app was last updated on February 16, 2026, indicating a commitment to ongoing development.

### What is the pricing for FocalPaint?

FocalPaint is a paid application, available for $4.99. It does not feature in-app purchases or advertisements.

### What color model does FocalPaint use?

FocalPaint utilizes a 16 channel "spectral" color model with 256 bits per pixel and supports a wide color gamut (P3) for enhanced color accuracy.

## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 4.1.1 — 2026-08-08

Fixed Eraser mode that caused a crash
Added a brush inheritance field to allow brushes to be based on a common brush
Enhanced bristle and bristle cluster settings to allow much more fidelity in brushes
The next release will have a huge update to the brush library!

### 4.1.0 — 2026-07-15

- Brush Tag menu system. Brushes grouped by keywords added in the brush editor
- Major Performance improvements
- Rendering problem with tiny brushes fixed
- New Light Sketch brush added

### 4.0.5 — 2026-04-13

- added additional canvas textures
- added preference option to disable brush cursor
- updated slider style to more modern thumbless look

### 4.0.4 — 2026-02-16

- per-layer custom shader code editor (make your own special FX or custom layer modes)
- brush updates and fixes
- removes donation links (removes in-app purchases)

### 3.8 — 2025-08-04

Set a maximum canvas size of 25 megapixels, to avoid problems with excessive memory usage.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-15.*