Adobe Fresco: live brushes that behave like real paint
Adobe Fresco simulates watercolour and oil that bleed and mix on the canvas. We look at what that buys and what the Adobe account costs you.
Fresco is Adobe's answer to Procreate, and its distinguishing feature is one thing: live brushes. Watercolour spreads into wet paper, oil picks up the colour underneath and smears it.
What it gives you
Paint that behaves like paint. Most apps simulate a brush texture; Fresco simulates the medium. Lay blue over wet yellow and you get a green bleed, not a blue mark on top.
Vector and raster on the same canvas. Line work stays scalable while painting stays pixels — a combination the rest of this list does not offer.
Files that open in Photoshop with layers intact, if you already work that way.
What it costs
An Adobe account. Required even for the free tier, and the app leans on it: your work is meant to live in Creative Cloud.
Subscription pressure. The free set is genuinely usable, but the full brush library, cloud storage and Photoshop round-tripping are paid, and the app reminds you.
Weight and demands. Live brush simulation is expensive; on older tablets it slows down where simpler apps do not.
Who it is not for
Anyone who wants to open an app and draw a line. The account, the cloud and the Adobe framing add steps that Sketchbook does not have.
Readers in Russia should note that Fresco is not available in the Russian App Store — this card describes the app as sold in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.