Create Transparent Graphics Using Paper by FiftyThree on the iPad

Paper by FiftyThree is a popular drawing app that has been gaining allot of attention lately. Well deserved attention, and it's latest update has really expanded it's utility. Now, not only can you save your drawing to the cameral roll, you do so without the background. This one option opens a whole range of creative opportunities. Let explore some...

First of there are many reviews out there for Paper, so I'm not going to cover too much about how it works. It is fairly simple, the free app comes with a ink drawing pen and an eraser, but additional tools are $2 IAP ($8 for everything). If you don't want everything I would just get the water color brush, but that depends on your graphical style. Once you are set for tools create some stuff!

Now that you have your master piece, pinch on screen to go to the notebook page screen. Then tap on the middle, share, button. Switch ON the Camera Roll. You aren't done yet though! Tap on the Camera Roll text, for the settings dialog. Here turn OFF the Save Background. Now go back to Share, and tap on the blue Share button.

Your art will now be available in your Photo Albums, but not as a standard photo. It was saved as a PNG file with a 24-bit alpha channel, or in other words the paper part is transparent. There isn't a big white square underneath it all. iOS normally doesn't deal with transparent images so the Photo app and the Photo browser may display the background as black or with a different photo in the background, but they should import just fine. Let's try Keynote.

It looks like the art was created right on your background slide! The graphic size is the entire area of the Paper app document size. To fix this, adjust the Mask under properties.

In the Pages app, text wrapping automatically flows around your art.

In the PhotoForge2 app you can add a photo as a new layer. So now you can add a signature, some graffiti, or even a tattoo to your photographs. You can size, rotate, and put your art anywhere you want. I hadn't thought to use transparent images in PhotoForge2, so now I have a whole range of useful images for mobile retouching. Images with prepared masks save allot of time!

Finally here is a quick and dirty animation using the Animation Creator HD app.