Comparison

Pastello vs Split Lab

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Pastello

Transform your photos into stunning dry media art, mimicking styles like pastel, charcoal, and colored pencil. This app offers a professional workflow with customizable layers and one-click presets for creating expressive, traditional-looking artwork.

Highlights
  • Photo to Pastel, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon conversion
  • Layering of different dry media
  • Customizable stroke direction, size, and volume
  • One-click presets with customization options
  • Traditional sketch styles and DaVinci effect
  • Professional workflow for artists and photographers
Read full description

Transform photos into a fine art drawing with Pastel, Pencil, Chalk, Charcoal and Crayon Introducing Pastello, a brand-new companion app to JixiPix’s Impresso Pro. Pastello takes you back in time to the 15th century. Away from brushes and large strokes and into the realm of dry media with color that is both brilliant and subtle. The “Dry color method” made famous by Leonardo da Vinci is so powerful in its simplicity and beauty with its black and red chalk and yellow pastel highlights. Later, artists would paint charming portraits in a smooth heavily blended fashion. Move forward a few centuries later and pastel quickly became filled with brilliant color and crisp detail. Fast forward to today and a digital age has made it so you, the artist, can mix and match media that is difficult or impossible in a traditional setting. Pastello makes it simple and convenient to take an image and change it into Pastel, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon, Colored Pencil and Graphite drawings. Use alone or combine these medias using powerful layers to produce interesting expressive sketch effects filled with colorful personality and passion. And the best part is Pastello does all the work. With Pastello, photographers and artists can now go beyond the camera to turn image files into creative works that resemble traditional handmade media using a professional workflow that is easy and comfortable to operate. Pastello has a pro workflow that automatically transforms a photo into a pastel drawing and places it on an art paper with options to customize. The Pastel can then be changed to Chalk, Charcoal, Colored Pencil, Graphite, Conte or Crayon using Layer styles. The medias start out delicate like traditional drawings do, then allows you to build them up using fills, shading and detail layers. The medias are beautiful as they are, or mix them for an expressive artwork. Pastello includes plenty of traditional sketch styles as well as a DaVinci effect using a mixed media of pencil, charcoal, crayon and old paper. It’s easy to use! We have mixed the media into one-click presets with all the freedom to customize, blend and fine-tune for your own unique artwork filled with age, depth and timeless beauty as if created by the renaissance artist himself. Pastel Styles: Colored Pencil, Graphite, Charcoal, and Chalk come with a fill and detail option that can be layered for infinite variation. Conte has a dynamic sketch feature that lets you fill in shadows, mid-tones and highlights with crosshatching or scumbling. All with the ability to change stroke direction, size, volume and variation. Pastel—(Soft) is a soft, buttery consistency and intense color. This effect is dense and filled with the grain of the paper. Chalk—(Hard Pastel) is a light dusty effect with little specks of preserved paper. This chalky pastel is known for it’s soft strokes and velvety texture. Charcoal—creates a velvety black charcoal effect with shades of grey. Use it for warming up the under painting of a composition, or to complete a finished charcoal piece. Colored Pencil—creates soft colorful strokes in the drawing that can be layered to build up color then burnished with a light Pencil Layer, or the Smudge tool. Pencil—creates pencil drawings with fluid outlines and soft, limpid tonal shadings for a drawing filled with warmth and charm. Conté—is a beautiful crayon media for enhancing highlights, midtones and shadows in drawings using classic colors. Crayon—creates a colorful waxy base to a drawing, then burnished it with a Conte White for highlights or Bistre for shading.

About

Split Lab

Easily split large photos into multiple sections for printing or creating wall collages. Offers various template formats and customizable settings for precise image tiling on your mobile device.

Highlights
  • Split large photos
  • Multiple template formats
  • Customizable settings
  • Save and share split images
  • Dropbox integration
  • Print-ready output
Features
Read full description

Big photos are great, until you need to print them! Split Lab helps you to create multiple splits fitting to your target format. Make large printouts, plaster your walls - with Split Lab! Split Lab supports multiple template formats, split strategies and customizable settings. The resulting split images can be shared, saved, printed, stored in your Dropbox or any other option you have on your specific device to handle files. The power of Split Lab for iOS: ​ Some years back, we introduced Split Lab to macOS as a powerful tool for professional image splitting and tiling. Now, with the release of Split Lab for iOS, we bring this power to your mobile device.

Screenshots

Split Lab4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Pastello at 79% against Split Lab's 15%. Pastello also leads on rating (4.7 vs 1.8) and update cadence (every 3 months vs every 10 months). Split Lab's advantage is price ($0.99 vs $29.99). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Pastello costs $29.99 and Split Lab $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Pastello holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 1.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 43 and 9 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 79% of Pastello's written reviews are positive against 15% of Split Lab's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pastello ships an update every 3 months, Split Lab every 10 months. The most recent releases landed on June 1, 2026 and September 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Pastello versus Split Lab: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPastelloSplit Lab
Price$29.99$0.99 — better
Rating4.7 (43 ratings) — better1.8 (9 ratings)
Positive reviews78.9% of reviews — better15.4% of reviews
Number of ratings43 — better9
Update frequencyEvery 3 months — betterEvery 10 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidPaid
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size123 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJixiPix SoftwarePengsquare UG (haftungsbeschraenkt)

Customer experience

Pastello

All ratings43 ratings
Positive93.0%
Neutral2.3%
Negative4.7%
Written reviews19 reviews
Positive78.9%
Neutral0.0%
Negative21.1%

Split Lab

All ratings9 ratings
Positive22.2%
Neutral0.0%
Negative77.8%
Written reviews13 reviews
Positive15.4%
Neutral0.0%
Negative84.6%

In-app purchases

None

Pastello

No in-app purchases

None

Split Lab

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Pastello free?
Pastello costs $29.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Split Lab free?
Split Lab costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Pastello or Split Lab?
Pastello is rated higher. Pastello averages 4.7 out of 5 from 43 ratings, while Split Lab averages 1.8 from 9 ratings.
Do Pastello or Split Lab have ads?
Neither Pastello nor Split Lab shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pastello or Split Lab?
Pastello ships an update every 3 months, and Split Lab every 10 months. Most recently, Pastello was updated on June 1, 2026 and Split Lab on September 22, 2026.

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