Adobe Fresco vs ibis Paint X

Price

Adobe Fresco is free with every tool included, while ibis Paint X is free to download with paid upgrades.

Adobe Fresco is free, with thousands of brushes, unlimited layers and animation tools included. An optional subscription bundles it with Photoshop on iPad for $7.99 a month on the US App Store.

ibis Paint X is free with ads. Ads can be removed for $15.99 once, or Premium membership, which adds extra features and materials, costs $4.49 a month or $27.99 a year on the US App Store.

Platforms

Both run on iPad and iPhone. Only Adobe Fresco runs on Windows. Only ibis Paint X runs on Android.

Fresco is one app for iPad and iPhone, and there is also a Windows version. Adobe's system requirements list no Mac or Android version. You can start drawing without signing in, but exporting and cloud saving need an Adobe account.

ibis Paint X is one app for iPhone and iPad, and it is also available on Android.

Brushes

Fresco includes thousands of free brushes: blendable raster brushes, vector brushes that stay sharp at any size, and Live Brushes that simulate watercolor and oil paint. It also imports Photoshop brushes.

ibis Paint X advertises more than 130,000 brushes along with 30,000+ materials and 46 screentones, which makes it one of the biggest brush collections of any drawing app.

Comics and manga

Adobe Fresco does not advertise comic tools such as panel layouts or screentones, though its text, shapes and vector brushes help with lettering and clean line art.

ibis Paint X is popular for manga, with 46 screentones, more than 3,000 fonts for lettering and a large online library of inking brushes.

Layers and editing

Adobe Fresco: Layers are unlimited, with masks, clipping and Photoshop-style adjustment layers for brightness, hue/saturation and color balance. Liquify, free transform and a magic wand are included, and documents open directly in Photoshop and Illustrator.

ibis Paint X: It offers 27 layer blend modes, clipping, 86 image filters, vector tools and a reference window, which is a lot of power for a free app.

Drawing tools and extras

Adobe Fresco: Drawing aids include Snap to Shape, rotational and reflective symmetry, rulers, and perspective grids you can build from a photo. Fresco also has frame-by-frame animation with motion paths, GIF and MP4 export, Adobe Fonts for text, and timelapse export.

ibis Paint X: Drawing aids include radial and symmetry rulers. ibis Paint X also does frame-by-frame animation with music and audio, records a timelapse, and has an AI Disturbance feature meant to protect your art from AI training.