Comparison

Trazu vs SHADR

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

Head to head
About

Trazu

A versatile painting and drawing application offering realistic wet brush effects and advanced layering. Explore various mediums, composition guides, and study views to enhance your artwork. The app works offline and offers a free version with an optional one-time purchase for premium features.

Highlights
  • Realistic wet brush simulation
  • Layer-based painting
  • Composition guides (rule of thirds, golden section)
  • Four study views (Value, Temperature, Saturation, Contrast)
  • Offline functionality
  • One-time purchase for premium features
Features
Read full description

A painting and drawing app. Free to start. Trazu Premium is a single one-time purchase, yours for life, no subscription. The brush carries a charge of paint that depletes as you drag, picks up wet color already on the canvas, and responds to pressure and speed. Nine mediums, each with its own behavior. Oil drags and blends. Watercolor goes translucent and blooms at the edges. Charcoal, chalk, and pastel catch the grain. Ink stays crisp. Airbrush lays soft gradients, blending stumps move paint without adding any, and a basic medium covers quick sketching. Paint in layers. Keep the sketch, the color and the details apart, and hide, rename, fade or merge any of them. Select part of a layer by rectangle, freehand or ellipse, then move, scale or turn it. Composition guides sit over the canvas while you paint and never reach your export: the rule of thirds, diagonals and a grid, and the classical constructions of the masters, from the golden section and golden spiral to dynamic symmetry and the harmonic armature. Over twenty brush tips, twelve paper textures, six canvas shapes, a full HSB color picker with hex input and recent colors. Eyedropper, paint bucket flood fill, symmetry, flip, and undo. Import a photo and paint over it. Four study views (Value, Temperature, Saturation, Contrast) let you flip the canvas and read your work while you paint. Everything stays on your device. No account, no sign-up, no ads, no cross-app tracking. Works fully offline. Free includes over twenty brushes, nine papers, three layers, the everyday composition guides, PNG and JPEG export, and ten saved drawings. Trazu Premium removes the drawing limit and unlocks up to twenty layers, the classical composition guides, the four study views, transparent PNG export, six master brushes (silverpoint, conté, scumble, blending stump, tortillon, and airbrush), and three master papers (black, laid Ingres, terracotta).

About

SHADR

Transform photos and blank canvases into unique visual art with a variety of creative styles. Refine your creations with expressive controls and discover new directions through generative randomization. Export still images or live photos and videos.

Highlights
  • Diverse and evolving collection of creative visual styles
  • Generative randomization for discovering new directions
  • Focused controls for refining composition, color, texture, and movement
  • Still image export at native resolution
  • Live Photo and video output
  • Local projects and reusable presets
Read full description

SHADR is a creative design toolkit for transforming photographs and blank canvases into distinctive visual artwork. Explore a growing collection of styles including ASCII Art, Dithering, CMYK Halftone, Pixel Stretch, Fluted Glass, Kaleidoscope, Flow Field, Kinetic Typography, Light Cast, Pixel Scatter, Glow Matrix, Path Blur, Surveillance Aesthetic, Glitch Art, Geometric Abstraction, Low Poly, Mirror Mosaic, Slice Effect, Out of Bounds, Linocut, Paper Marbling, Color Reconstruction, Contact Sheet, and Rebus. Each style is a focused creative tool inside one consistent editor. Import a photo or begin from a blank canvas where supported, generate new directions, shape the result with expressive controls, and move fluidly between different visual treatments. Features: - A diverse and evolving collection of creative visual styles - Generative randomization for quickly discovering new directions - Focused controls for refining composition, color, texture, and movement - Still image export - Live Photo and video output in supported tools - Import a video and apply effects to it; selected tools can track what moves in the clip - A built-in sample on every tool, ready to try - Local projects and reusable presets - Subject-aware treatments in selected tools Privacy Policy: https://shadr.studio/privacy Terms of Use: https://shadr.studio/terms

Screenshots

Trazu4 screens
SHADR4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: Trazu at 3 against SHADR's 1. Trazu also leads on iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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

Both are free to download. Trazu sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and SHADR sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Trazu against 5.0 for SHADR. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Trazu ships an update fortnightly, SHADR every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 8, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Trazu versus SHADR: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterTrazuSHADR
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings)
Number of ratings11
Update frequencyFortnightlyEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFreemium
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone
Requires iOS16.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size32 MB25 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperPaintingstack Technologies SpA伟滔 黄

Customer experience

Trazu

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

SHADR

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Trazu

One-time1
  • Trazu Premium Lifetime$9.99
2 purchases

SHADR

Subscriptions1
  • SHADR Pro Annual$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • SHADR Pro Lifetime$24.99

Questions

Is Trazu free?
Trazu is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is SHADR free?
SHADR is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Trazu or SHADR?
Trazu and SHADR are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 1 and 1 ratings respectively.
Do Trazu or SHADR have ads?
Neither Trazu nor SHADR shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Trazu or SHADR?
Trazu ships an update fortnightly, and SHADR every 2 weeks. Most recently, Trazu was updated on November 8, 2026 and SHADR on November 6, 2026.

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