Charcoal Studio vs qCurving
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Charcoal Studio
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Charcoal Studio brings the feel of a real charcoal sketchbook to iPhone and iPad. Pick up a stick, lay down rich, grainy tone, then blend it into smooth gradients or lift it back out, the way you would on paper. A FULL CHARCOAL KIT • Charcoal Pencil: fine lines and crisp detail • Vine Charcoal: soft, light marks for loose sketching • Compressed Charcoal: dense, velvety blacks • Charcoal Block: broad strokes for shading large areas • White Charcoal: highlights on toned and dark paper • Charcoal Powder: soft washes of tone • Lasso: select, move and resize your strokes BLEND AND LIFT LIKE THE REAL THING • Blending Stump: push charcoal into the paper’s grain, soften hard edges and build smooth tonal transitions. It moves only charcoal, never the paper, so your darks stay rich. • Kneaded Eraser: dab or drag to lift charcoal gently and add highlights. It follows the tooth of the paper, so lightened areas keep their natural texture. • Eraser: clean removal whenever you need it. MADE FOR APPLE PENCIL • Pressure and tilt shape every mark • Strokes are smoothed so blending and erasing follow your hand without jagged corners • Double-tap or squeeze Apple Pencil to switch tools or show tool settings • Draw with your finger too, or turn finger drawing off for Pencil-only work PAPER WITH TOOTH • Five papers: white, cream, toned gray, slate and black • A real paper grain shows through every stroke • Choose your canvas: portrait, landscape, square, or any custom size from 256 to 4096 pixels AN EXPERIENCE THAT FEELS ANALOG • Hear the scratch of charcoal when you hatch, while ordinary lines stay quiet • Pinch to zoom and pan around your page • Ruler for straight edges • Charcoal-tone palette, plus your own saved colours • Size, opacity and strength controls for every tool YOUR SKETCHBOOK • Every sketch saves automatically • Unlimited sketches in your gallery • Undo and redo as many steps as you need • Export at full resolution and share anywhere Everything stays on your device: no account and no sign-up. Focus on your drawing. Leave the dust on the paper. Privacy policy: https://digitalhole.github.io/LilArtist.html Standard Apple Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
qCurving
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qCurving is a vector graphics editor for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Draw paths with the pen tool, fine-tune anchor points and handles right at your fingertips, and create logos, icons, diagrams and illustrations with precision, wherever you are. NO MORE TYPING NUMBERS • Fix lengths to whole units while dragging, so rectangles, lines and polygons come out with round dimensions DRAW WITH PRECISION • Pen, pencil, line, rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, star • Add, delete and convert anchor points; edit nodes and handles directly • Snap to points; move and rotate in set increments • Connectors between objects (snap to end points and centers; lines follow when shapes move) WORK WITH TYPE • Text panel: font, size, leading, tracking, horizontal and vertical scale, baseline shift • All caps, small caps, superscript, subscript, underline, strikethrough • Paragraph: left, center, right and justified alignment; left, right and first-line indents; space before and after • Convert text to outlines and edit it as paths BUILD SHAPES • Pathfinder (unite, intersect, minus front, exclude) • Outline stroke, offset path, round corners, reverse path direction • Align and distribute, compound paths, stacking order, flip • Layers (show/hide, lock, reorder, merge) • Fill and stroke (RGB / CMYK, width, caps, corners, dashes) • Numeric input for position, size, move, rotate and scale OPEN AND EXPORT • Open and edit SVG and PDF files (choose which pages to import from a multi-page PDF) • Export to SVG, PDF (millimeter units, CMYK supported), PNG / JPEG / BMP, and for the web • Default stroke width is 1 mm in PDF and 1 px in SVG, so dimensions are ready for print and technical drawing PHOTOS TO VECTOR • Trace Image: turns a placed image into stacked vector shapes, one per color, with a live preview • Detect Objects: AI guesses what each object is (person, animal, plant, text, graphic, sky) and tunes the trace to match. Every object gets its own group; rename or skip any of them • Split Finely with AI: an on-device model separates plate, table, food and more. Downloaded once (about 86 MB), only after you confirm; your images never leave your device NEW DRAWING TOOLS • Width Tool for strokes that swell and taper; Spiral, Rectangular Grid and Polar Grid tools • 7 distortion brushes: Warp, Twirl, Pucker, Bloat, Scallop, Crystallize, Wrinkle • Distort Path (Zigzag, Roughen, Pucker & Bloat, Twist) and object locking SELECT, FIND AND SAVE • Select every object of the same kind in one step • Find Objects (⌥⌘F): filter by kind, fill, stroke color, width or layer • Save Options: compressed or plain, levels 1 to 9; images are never recompressed DESIGNED FOR EACH DEVICE • Mac: a desktop interface with a menu bar and keyboard shortcuts • iPhone and iPad: a trackpad-like "relative" mode so your finger never hides your drawing; wide-screen iPhones get the iPad layout • External display or AirPlay: the desktop interface on the big screen, a trackpad in your hands COLOR, BLENDS AND PAGES • Gradient and Blend tools; rulers, guides and alignment to a key object • Multiple pages (multi-page PDF export) and document tabs PRIVACY No account required. Your documents and images are never collected or sent anywhere. The only network use is downloading the splitting model, once, when you first choose Split Finely with AI and confirm. GOOD TO KNOW • When opening a PDF, paths (fills and strokes) and colors are imported. Text, images, gradients and clipping are not imported yet. • Full compatibility with other vendors' software is not guaranteed. • CMYK and color handling are our own approximation; no ICC-profile color management is performed. On-screen colors may differ from printed results. Always check your printer's requirements and a proof before printing or submitting files. • Feedback and requests are welcome on the support page.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Charcoal Studio at Free against qCurving's $5.99. qCurving's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1). On update cadence, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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
Charcoal Studio is free to download; qCurving costs $5.99 up front. Charcoal Studio sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. qCurving asks for nothing beyond the download.
Charcoal Studio ships an update every 3 days, qCurving every 2 days. Both last shipped on November 6, 2026.
| Parameter | Charcoal Studio | qCurving |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $5.99 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 14 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Digital Hole Pvt. Ltd. | USHIO FUJIMURA |
In-app purchases
Charcoal Studio
- Unlock All Features$4.99
qCurving
No in-app purchases








