Calligraphy Handbook vs Trace it ! Let's draw app
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Calligraphy Handbook
This app is a digital tool for learning and practicing calligraphy. It offers various pens, colors, and effects for both beginners and experienced artists. Users can also challenge friends or test their skills with a calligraphy game.
- Digital pens and papers for learning
- Unique pen and color effects
- Calligraphy game for skill evaluation
- 11 calligraphic pens and 1 pointed pen
- 19 calligraphic hands in various styles
- Layer management for artistic creation
- Export creations to camera roll or email
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It's proven that practicing calligraphy can quickly improve bad handwriting by a better understanding of letters' structure and proportion. Writing bigger letters helps to make curves and lines correctly. The beauty of the letters will make the task of writing more pleasant. Calligraphy is also a very constructive leisure. It develops virtues such as patience, attention to detail, perfection, willingness to learn, and the sense of beauty. Calligraphy is a full art form using letters, words and illuminations. It’s also a meditation process when your mind focuses on the strokes, beautifully draw lines and curves, following your intuition and inspiration. The only pre-requirement to this art is the knowledge of writing, which everyone is proficient. Calligraphy has a high potential of discoveries, it’s one of the rare art form that you can start from a basis you already know: writing letters and words. 1/ CALLIGRAPHY HANDBOOK is a perfect tool for learning and improving your calligraphy skill. As a beginner, the app will provide the best digital pens and papers for your learning. Don’t waste paper and ink now, digital tools are endlessly renewable. As a confirmed calligrapher, you will find pen and color effects that are impossible to create in real life: 6 small parallel lines, 4 size-lines, light effect pen, shaded line, rainbow effect, mixed colors in one stroke, alternated colors in one letter… 2/ CHALLENGE your friends in different writing styles, or simply evaluate your skill with the incredible calligraphy game. Reproduce a model inside a limited space, with a limited number of strokes, and see how many stars you can gain. Avoid actions as: undo, exceeding strokes or using tracing image. Otherwise your score will be heavily cut down. 3/ WRITING TOOLS: - 11 calligraphic pens - 1 pointed pen - 12 mixed colors effects - 12 alternated colors effects - 1 eraser - Smoothed strokes for all pens, let you draw perfect curves and lines. NOTE: we have intentionally made the strokes slower and smoother, because drawing beautiful letters has to be done in a slower speed compared to handwriting or painting. Calligraphy is a highly relaxing activity, a slow motion is the best for it. Writing features and supplies: - 19 calligraphic hands in a large choice of styles (more hands are coming with future updates) - Old papers - Guiding lines - Shadowed letters for tracing - 24 preset pen angles - 63 premixed colors - Export your writing to the camera roll or by email. - Palm rejection - Pen offset 4 / ARTISTIC CREATION. Calligraphy Handbook is a truly comprehensive tool for creating calligraphic works (greeting card, invitation, letterhead, logo, brochure, magazine cover, etc ... - Users can create true works of art with all the calligraphic tools. - An entire page is provided with layers management. - A gallery to save works in progress. - The gallery is organized by blocks, each block contains an unlimited number of pages. - The works and the blocks can be exported and shared in png or pdf formats. - Shadows and texture can be added to your lettering. 5/ TIPS: - Draw your letters very very SLOWLY. - Take a long breathe before a long stroke, then expire slowly and regularly while drawing. - Take a comfortable sitting position. - Clean up your screen frequently. - When following the lessons in this app, don’t pressure yourself to immediately draw perfect letters, but simply follow your intuition and focus on the movement of the strokes. It’s not so important to get completely correct letters, don’t forget, it’s not typography. - Relax yourself before starting a calligraphy session, you will have better strokes. Stretch and simply shake your hands and shoulders. Take a comfortable sitting position.
Trace it ! Let's draw app
Easily create stunning drawings and illustrations by tracing images from your device or camera onto physical paper. Perfect for artists of all ages looking to practice and learn new drawing techniques.
- Trace any image from device or camera
- Use with physical paper for stenciling
- Adjust zoom and image opacity
- Includes pre-defined drawing images
- Create stencils and coloring sheets
- Practice drawing and fonts
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Trace it ! Let's draw app! Would you like to leave your friends with their mouths open in amazement? What would that person you like think if they saw some perfect and professional drawings made by you? Become the most admired and prestigious of your group through your spectacular drawings. Get started right now with Trace It! Start right now with Trace It and become the most popular! This tracing application is an integrated application for making (easily) beautiful drawings and illustrations. This application is intended to be used with a physical paper for stenciling and drawing. Just select an image on screen, place a blank paper in front of the mobile and start tracing. You must trace while looking through the camera output on your phone’s screen, as smartphones do not yet have projection capabilities. The default application will show you a pre-defined image but you can change it to : - Take a picture directly on your phone. - Use an image you have saved in your image library. - Use any one of the beautiful images that are included and specially chosen for you to learn how to draw. It is perfect for tracing drawings and fonts, making stencils, coloring sheets for kids, connect the dots puzzles and a lot of other utilities. You have a button to adjust the zoom and another to control the opacity of the image you want to trace depending on the light. It's really great for stenciling and practicing drawing. This is the perfect app for artists of all ages, for children, for young students, and for anyone (of any age) who wants to learn how to draw. If you are passionate about arts and crafts, this app is definitely for you. It will allow you to easily move from an image to the support on which you work your crafts.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Calligraphy Handbook at 74% against Trace it ! Let's draw app's 21%. Calligraphy Handbook also leads on rating (4.5 vs 2.4) and ads (none vs shown). Trace it ! Let's draw app's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1). On price 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
Both are free to download. Calligraphy Handbook sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Trace it ! Let's draw app asks for nothing beyond the download.
Calligraphy Handbook holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 2.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Calligraphy Handbook has 518 ratings behind it against 13, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 74% of Calligraphy Handbook's written reviews are positive against 21% of Trace it ! Let's draw app's.
Calligraphy Handbook ships an update every 4 months, Trace it ! Let's draw app every 14 months. The most recent releases landed on September 12, 2026 and June 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Calligraphy Handbook | Trace it ! Let's draw app |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (518 ratings) — better | 2.4 (13 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 74.1% of reviews — better | 21.4% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 518 — better | 13 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months — better | Every 14 months |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Ad-supported — better |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 18.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 257 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Etienne Nguyen Tan Hon | Alberto del Rio |
Customer experience
Calligraphy Handbook
Trace it ! Let's draw app
Bugs and requests
Calligraphy Handbook
Reported bugs
4 issues- App crashes when switching between uppercase and lowercase letters
- Undo feature causes freezing and loss of progress
- Inconsistent performance and lag when using Apple Pencil
- Restoration of in-app purchases not working as expected
Requested features
5 requests- Add more font styles, especially Gothic and modern
- Implement better palm rejection and input handling
- Allow users to favorite/save preferred font styles
- Add the ability to practice full words and sentences
- Improve export and sharing options
Trace it ! Let's draw app
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Calligraphy Handbook
- Unlock All Features$3.99
Trace it ! Let's draw app
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Calligraphy Handbook free?
Is Trace it ! Let's draw app free?
Which has better reviews, Calligraphy Handbook or Trace it ! Let's draw app?
Do Calligraphy Handbook or Trace it ! Let's draw app have ads?
Which is updated more often, Calligraphy Handbook or Trace it ! Let's draw app?
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