Back in October 2018, Adobe announced the tentatively titled “Project Gemini” – their latest mobile app made specifically for drawing and painting. Using what they learned from previous creative software endeavors—such as Photoshop’s brush tools and engine—Project Gemini focuses on adding even more painting tools including watercolor and live oil brushes to a stripped-down interface capable of producing stunning pieces of digital artwork in the hands of a talented artist.
Six months later and Adobe has finally released a beta version of the app to a select few artists as well as at a preview event in the New York MoCCA Arts Festival.
According to early tester Dami Lee, the brushes in Project Gemini—particularly their Live oil brushes—work just like their real-life versions; only without all the spillage and mess. Using the Apple Pencil, the brushes react to previously painted areas, allowing users to mix different paints and get varying results. Watercolor paints applied to the canvas tend to spread more thinly the longer you brush, while oil paints have a thick texture which only gets thicker the more you apply it.
“We’ve talked to hundreds of illustrators to learn the pain points of their existing workflows on the desktop on mobile,” says the company in a blog post. “And we’ve heard from Sketch and Draw users creating professional quality work who need even more power.”
The app has a ton of brushes to choose from, and all of them can be scaled to whatever size you need them to be. You can even import your custom-made brushes from your Photoshop library. Project Gemini’s interface is very similar to the one found on the Photoshop app for the iPad, with the layer bar on the right and the toolbar on the left-hand side.
Once you’re done painting, Project Gemini saves your projects onto the Creative Cloud, where Adobe is currently in talks with other companies including Google and Dropbox about third-party applications. In the meantime, the projects sync directly to more robust Adobe Creative Cloud apps including Photoshop and Illustrator for continuing via desktop.
Project Gemini is set to launch on the iPad first, with Windows 10 and Android devices getting a release sometime later in 2019. Anyone interested in being a part of Project Gemini’s iOS pre-release program can complete a short survey over at Adobe.
Feature image via Cult of Mac
