There's a new brush palette, a new color editor, a layer editor, and a new toolbar. The revamped interface is more intuitive. When drawing and sketching, lines appear faster, with absolutely no discernable latency.

The interface has been streamlined, and the underlying code has been re-engineered from the ground up. Having used SketchBook Pro 2011, as well as the iOS version of the app, version 6 of software was familiar and easy for me to jump into. The newer input devices with support for multitouch navigation will especially appreciate the new SketchBook, however, since the software has been tuned to recognize multitouch gestures. I used my trusty Wacom Intuos4 during my tests (not the newer Intuos5 or Cintiq 24HD), although any of the Wacom series would work.

While it's possible to use the software with a mouse or a trackpad, SketchBook pro really shines when you pair it with a pen-based input device. The new SketchBook Pro has been given a massive overhaul, with a new interface and dozens of new tools.I'm the illustrator and artist-in-residence here at Wired, so when the time came to test the new version of SketchBook Pro, the task fell on me. It's a professional-grade drawing and painting application specifically designed for artists, and it's optimized for use with those big, pressure-sensitive, pen-based drawing tablets, like the Cintiq or Intuos tablets made by Wacom.

Pepper) chances are, they're using SketchBook Pro.

If you know any illustrators, visual designers or comic book artists working in the digital domain (they're easy to find, just follow the empty cans of Diet Dr.

Professional sketchbook