It’s official: the Microsoft Store now offers a direct download of Adobe’s digital drawing program, Fresco. Up until recently, the application could only be downloaded via Adobe’s website. It’s still Adobe that provides and manages the store version; Microsoft’s Store page is only a frontend that links you to Adobe’s servers, and the main Adobe Creative Cloud app is still required to install Fresco.
One of Adobe’s newer creative tools, Fresco is a digital painting and drawing program optimized for touch screens. It’s designed specifically for touchscreens and not just on Windows 11; it’s available on iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone but not macOS.
Adobe claims that its brush library, which includes thousands of brushes, is the largest and most sophisticated in the world because of Fresco. When using watercolors in a Fresco painting, you can watch the colors blend in real-time, just as they would if you were looking at the real thing. Oil paints and other media can be used in addition to watercolors and acrylics to create any type of artwork. Fresco has the standard functions of a graphic design program, such as the ability to create and edit layers and apply layer masks. Integrated into Adobe’s Creative Cloud, it may share files with other Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator.
And Fresco’s built-in live-streaming features make it easy to impart your skills to others even before you’ve finished your artwork. When you’re done drawing or painting, you can also export a time-lapse video of the process.
However, Arm-based devices such as the Surface Pro 9 with 5G and the Surface Pro X are not supported in this release of Fresco. Adobe made this promise in 2019 in response to the announcement of the Surface Pro X, and it’s still unfulfilled today. The company recently reaffirmed its plan to introduce an Arm version in 2023 at the Snapdragon Summit, so here’s hoping we won’t have to wait too long.
