Comparison

Path on vs Pastello

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

Head to head
About

Path on

Add custom text to your photos with unique fonts and creative layouts. Draw text along custom paths or simple shapes, and enhance your images with filters and backdrops. Save and share your artistic creations with friends.

Highlights
  • Draw text along custom paths
  • Add text to simple shapes
  • 300+ unique fonts
  • Adjustable text size and alignment
  • Font Mix feature
  • Apply filters and backdrops
  • Save and share creations
Features
Read full description

Introduced by official App Store Facebook!!! Now your pictures can have a thousand words with Path On. Use crazy fonts to decorate your pictures with words, quotes, and lyrics, and share it with your friends. Don't worry about restrictions, type whatever and wherever you want. Draw a line with your finger and your text will appear along the line. We also provide simple shapes, like a spiral, circle, or square. Our app works great for anyone into scrapbooking, artistic photos, or even just making fun pictures to share. Path On features almost 300 different fonts--no additional cost and unlimited use, of course-- with the ability to adjust the size, alignment, letter spacing, and more. With that many fonts, we understand it's hard to choose just one. That's why we added a Font Mix feature, so you can choose up to 5 fonts that will be randomly applied to your text. You can also make your fonts stand out even more by changing the backdrop or using one of our great filters. If you want to come back to it later, no worries. Your work can be saved at any time. And of course don't forget to share with your friends! Win a spot in our gallery by adding #Pathonselection on Twitter and Facebook or @Pathonselection on Instagram. Don't know what to do? Try this: Instead of a picture of just you and your boyfriend or girlfriend, make it special by adding 'I love you' or your names in a heart-shaped outline.

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.

Screenshots

Path on4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Path on at $1.99 against Pastello's $29.99. Path on also leads on update cadence (every 4 weeks vs every 3 months) and ratings volume (253 vs 44). Pastello's advantage is rating (4.8 vs 3.9). On review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases 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

Path on costs $1.99 and Pastello $29.99 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, 4.8 against 3.9. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Path on has 253 ratings behind it against 44, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 83% of Path on's written reviews are positive against 79% of Pastello's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Path on ships an update every 4 weeks, Pastello every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
Path on versus Pastello: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPath onPastello
Price$1.99 — better$29.99
Rating3.9 (253 ratings)4.8 (44 ratings) — better
Positive reviews83.0% of reviews — better78.9% of reviews
Number of ratings253 — better44
Update frequencyEvery 4 weeks — betterEvery 3 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree — betterPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPad
Requires iOS6.0 — better15.0
Further details — not scored
Size59 MB123 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperPeta VisionJixiPix, LLC

Customer experience

Path on

All ratings253 ratings
Positive69.6%
Neutral7.1%
Negative23.3%
Written reviews1,140 reviews
Positive83.0%
Neutral4.4%
Negative12.6%

Pastello

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

Bugs and requests

Path on

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Crashes on launch or during use
  • Can't save or export edited images
  • Text formatting issues like cutting off words
  • Incompatible with newer iOS versions
  • General instability and performance problems

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add ability to edit/adjust text after placement
  • Allow multiple text areas on a single image
  • Improve text spacing and formatting controls
  • Add support for more image formats and sizes
  • Provide better instructions and documentation

Pastello

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Path on

No in-app purchases

None

Pastello

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Path on free?
Path on costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Pastello free?
Pastello costs $29.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Path on or Pastello?
Pastello is rated higher. Path on averages 3.9 out of 5 from 253 ratings, while Pastello averages 4.8 from 44 ratings.
Do Path on or Pastello have ads?
Neither Path on nor Pastello shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Path on or Pastello?
Path on ships an update every 4 weeks, and Pastello every 3 months. Most recently, Path on was updated on October 26, 2026 and Pastello on October 21, 2026.

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