drawing

The built-in Windows screen capture tool is pretty basic, and for that reason there is a plethora of programs that let users customize the way they take screenshots and what they do with the resulting images. CrossGL SnapDraw is one of the more comprehensive options we've seen. Casual users of screen capture tools will likely find the program to be a little much, but users who need options to annotate and edit their screenshots will appreciate the program's many features.

The first thing that CrossGL SnapDraw wanted us to do was configure the keyboard shortcut that we wanted … Read more

Six-Guns is a freemium sandbox cowboy game that models itself after the popular console game Red Dead Redemption. While it may not be on par graphically with the game it resembles, Six-Guns definitely still has good-looking graphics as you explore a huge world and complete quests. The control system is like in many first-person shooters on the iPhone: move your character using a control stick on the left side, and look around by swiping the screen on the right.

The game is set in both Oregon and Arizona (with a way to fast-travel between regions). As you explore, you'll … Read more

Cowboy Guns is a dual-stick shooter set in the Wild West with quests, guns you can upgrade, and a few different gameplay modes to keep you interested. Along with the dual-stick interface (standard movement on the left and firing on the right), you can switch to a different gun by tapping its icon in the middle; use thrown weapons like dynamite with a button on the right; or gain health back by tapping a first-aid icon on the left.

Adventure mode takes you through the storyline: you're a cowboy who faces a deadly gang of criminals called the Crimson … Read more

McGyro is a fun target-shooting game where you tilt your iPhone to aim at targets in an Old West setting. You play as the Sheriff McGyro, and your job is to blow away bad guys that appear as wooden targets.

The storyline is presented in comic book format between each part of the three-part missions. Each mission follows a simple formula: the introduction of a bad guy, traveling to the destination, killing the bad guy's evil henchmen, then killing the bad guy. Scoring head shots gives you extra points so it pays to be accurate, but if you don'… Read more

My daughter is a destroyer of forests. She spends a great deal of her free time drawing, and because she is only six, she has a great deal of free time. We go through so much paper that I feel guilty each Wednesday morning when I drag the recycling to the curb. And that's just the pictures we toss; she insists on saving a high percentage of her output as well.

We've tried using a white board, but you can't save pictures from a white board and she spends the rest of the day walking around with ink all over the side of her hand. Plus, she likes to use drawing utensils other than markers, including colored pencils, uncolored pencils, pastels, pens, and a variety of paints. She has taken to the iPad, and with the 99-cent Art Set app, she now draws and saves pictures on the iPad, saving numerous trees each week. The only problem with Art Set is that I have to tell her that Angry Birds and DoodleJump are not among her current entertainment options when I hand her the tablet for a drawing session.… Read more

You can already transform your iPhone into a baby toy and let your cats paint on your iPad. Now it's time to turn your toddlers loose on your Apple device.

The Crayola Trace & Draw system from Griffin Technology is an iPad 2 case designed to bring out your young one's inner Matisse or Motherwell.… Read more

When it comes to sharing ideas and communicating stories, sometimes it's just easier to present your thoughts by drawing them out. Not just for Pictionary, online whiteboards are great collaborative tools to help you visualize your thoughts and brainstorm ideas. These Web apps not only throw out the smelly dry-erase markers, but also add a few tricks to make sharing your works faster and easier than ever.

A Web Whiteboard (AWW), developed by Senko Rasic, was designed to be minimalistic and simple to use like a real whiteboard. Coded in HTML5, AWW not only performs smoothly, but leaves little … Read more

MobileMonet lets you make great-looking hand-drawn and artistic representations of your images. Though there are many photo apps in the iTunes app store that let you distort and add effects to images, with MobileMonet you can create truly unique projects using a two-step system. You either start with a photo from your library or you can snap a fresh picture using your iPhone camera. From there, MobileMonet makes a black-and-white line drawing of your image. Touch the screen to use a spray-can tool to add colors back in to your photograph with paintlike effects. You have a number of variables … Read more

DrawRace2 is the sequel to DrawRace, an unconventional but very fun take on racing games for the iPhone. In DrawRace games, you don't drive a car around a track in real time. Instead, you draw the path you will take around the track before the race even begins. When you're done drawing, you watch the race to see how you did.

While it sounds easy, you have to be very precise in the way you draw your line. As you come to sharp turns, for example, you'll need to draw more slowly, then speed up again as … Read more