A (quick) look at Fresco’s newest features

Art by Marcela Bolivar.

It wasn’t quite one year ago that we launched Adobe Fresco. It was even less time ago (May actually) that we released a build loaded with new features. So we’re pretty darn happy about this release and the often-requested features and functions in it.

We have been listening

When we introduced Fresco it was accompanied by a link to UserVoice (available from both in- and outside the app) so we could track which features were the most wanted by the most people. Those feature requests and upvotes (any +1s), some of them unprintable, provided valuable insight into which features we needed to work on first and where we should begin with features that required progressive development.

Here’s a quick look at the features in Fresco v1.9 along with some of the comments that prompted us to include them:

“Clipping masks… waiting, waiting.”

Because they make it so easy to define the boundaries of drawn content, we suspect Clipping Masks have been wished for by pretty much everyone who’s used the app since the beginning of Fresco’s time. They’re implemented now and super easy to use: To “clip” a layer (or layers) to another layer or layer group below, just tap the layer with the content you want to constrain then tap the Clipping Mask icon in the taskbar.

Art by Kate Lampe.

“[Brushes] it’s all a giant list I need to scroll thru.”

Fresco has a lot of brushes. And the capability to add even more. But since not every person wants to use every brush we’ve added Brushes Management to Fresco. This feature allows everyone to decide for themselves which Pixel brushes to show and which to hide. To get started creating a personalized set of go-to brushes, tap the ellipses icon (…) at the top of the Pixel brushes panel.

Art by Jessica Wong.

“Erasing is a guessing game.”

Brush Stamp Preview puts a stop to the game of guess-how-much-area-you’ll-be-covering. This size-and-shape indicator for Photoshop, Pixel, and Eraser brushes will appear as soon as a stylus or finger touches the screen. It’s off by default so make sure to enable it in App Settings > Input > Brushes > Brush Preview.

Art by Aiko Fukuda.

“Please make the app compatible with more Windows devices.”

We continue to hear them daily… requests to expand the list of allowable Windows devices. So we have. Fresco is now officially-supported on a number of additional devices but we’ve also made it compatible with any Windows 10 PC with a modern Intel or Nvidia graphics processor (check the system requirements).

The little things…

Anyone who likes the quick actions menu, available on the Cloud Documents screen, is going to love that the same quick actions menu is also in Recents; it means it’s now possible to Rename, Export as PSD, Duplicate, Delete, and Share Link without leaving the Home screen. And because we’ve created multiple states and multiple uses for the Touch Shortcut, and we want to make sure everyone knows what those are, we’ve updated the Touch Shortcut Map in the Help menu.

Continue to help us paint the future of Fresco

If you like where we’re headed, we want to hear your ideas about how we can make Fresco your go-to drawing app: Join the conversation on UserVoice.