One of the best tablets that Huawei has released to date, the MatePad Pro is a joy to use, especially if you’re feeling the creative itch. The M Pen combined with a thin but essential Huawei Matepad Keyboard case will increase your productivity tenfold. But hardware alone does a system make. Essential apps are key to everything working fine and unleashing your creative side.
Before being handed the Huawei MatePad Pro, it has been more than decade since I actually drew any artwork much less held the brush and painted. So when I had the opportunity to try out the Huawei MatePad Pro, Huawei’s latest and most powerful Tablet to date, along with its essential accessories such as the Huawei M-Pencil (stylus) and the Keyboard case, I jumped at the opportunity.
We’ve already reviewed the tablet and you can read a more in-depth and comprehensive discussion here. This write up serves more of my experience in dabbling with the M-pen and how these various apps helped me enrich my experience in re-awakening and rediscovering my artistic inclinations.
IBIS PAINT X
Ibis Paint X is a particularly robust freeware sketching and painting software. With the current version that I tried, a whole slew of brushes were already at my disposal. Everything from basic to advanced techniques like masking are present and paired with the Huawei M Pen on the Matepad Pro, I was able to create fully-realized artworks.
This was a 3-minute sketch of my dog. Internet, meet Cleo. :3
There’s also a layering system (much like Photoshop or Illustrator) which should help you organize your artworks, remove mistakes when you made to some and plan everything accordingly. Navigating through the options were quite intuitive and if you have been sketching on pen and paper, and if you have any experience with editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Ibis Paint X would be easy to transition to.
sketch, layering and more or final compre
MediBang Paint
If you’re dipping your hand at digital sketching blindly, MediBang Paint is an excellent software to get into. It’s a stripped-down version of Ibis Paint X giving you just the essentials (and a bit more) to let you start creating imaginative design and illustrations.
There’s a layering system as well, although not as robust and as intuitive, has loads of templates for you to use even on freeware. This gives you a lot of creative options to use to enhance your artwork. Sure, there may be ads littered but hey, at least you’re not paying upwards of $60 per month for use.
Here’s me attempting a very quick 5-minute doodle.
The stencil-like backgrounds are fun to do.
APRIL
April is a collage-maker. So, while you cannot really sketch on the app, what it does is give your sketches and artwork new life with its impressive range of effects and filters. And while some people may find this a bit too cheesy, having options open a huge range of creativity. Here’s my Batman sketches from above filtered through APRIL.
FilmoraGO
With a larger real estate and and your tablet serving as a huge trackpad with your M-Pen, sketching isn’t the only activity that’s enjoyable with the Huawei MatePad Pro. Video editing can be pretty painless with this setup. If you’re familiar with Film Editing software and their interface, FilmoraGO will look mighty familiar so you more or less know what to do. The app gives you enough freedom to cut the film in whatever way you want but also provides pre-rendered templated transitions that are hard to do on base Premiere alone. Of course, being able to slide, cut and quickly stitch your film through the timeline cuts a lot of editing time.
Also, if you’re using a Huawei device to capture the video, transferring to the Huawei MatePad Pro is made fast and easy via Huawei Share. This is a quick rough sample cut that literally took me less than 3 mins to do. The raw files were shot in 1080p at 60fps via Huawei P40 Pro and was transferred in less than 20 seconds to the MatePad Pro.
If you want a version that removes watermark and can edit films at higher resolution output, you’ll have to pay for the services. But if you’re making home videos, this should work just fine.
VivaVideo
Probably the video editing app that’s the bane of a lot of video editors. The pre-rendered template which already includes choice music can make any clip, ANY clip seem like it was rendered by a pro for hours and hours on end. In reality? You’ll spend the most of 5 minutes stitching things. In fact, I’d wager it’s going to take you longer to choose from the different templates than the actual rendering time itself.
The only draw back of VivaVideo is it currently has no landscape mode so you’ll be editing your videos with the tablet right side up. But aside from that, it’s just another quick and painless way to show off your creative prowess.
Huawei AppGallery
The great thing about all these apps are it’s found right on the Huawei AppGallery. All you need is to create your Huawei ID so you can gain access to a slew of apps natively curated in the third-largest app store in the world.
To know more about the Huawei AppGallery, and how to download essential apps on your new Huawei device, we actually have a helpful video created.
To check whether the Huawei MatePad Pro is onsale and has the current best price offer, stay glued to their Official Lazada Store online here.