Old Brushes paintings?
Did you paint in the original Brushes app on an iPhone or iPad? If you still have the files, we'd like to hear from you.
Paintings from the original Brushes app
Steve Sprang's painting app for iPhone and iPad, from 2009
What we're looking for: paintings made in Brushes 1 or 2, on iPhone or iPad
Especially: early iPad paintings
Also useful: files from Brushes 3 or later
For now: please just get in touch. Don't send any files yet.
In short
Lots of artists painted in Brushes, and many can no longer open, play back or export their paintings. We've worked with the Brushes file format for years and are running a small private test. If you still have your files, you might want to take part.
What happened
Brushes saved each painting as the strokes you made, not as a flat picture. That's how it could play a painting back stroke by stroke. It also meant you needed Brushes, or Brushes Viewer on a Mac, to open them.
2009 Brushes comes out for the iPhone.
2010 Brushes comes out for the iPad.
2012 Brushes 3 replaces the original app.
2013 The code is made open source.
2014 After the iOS 8 update, many people can't open their paintings.
By 2015 Brushes is no longer on the App Store.
2019 New versions of macOS stop running Brushes Viewer.
Today The paintings are still around, on old devices, in backups and on old Macs. As far as we know, nothing you can download today will open paintings from the original app.
Where to look
An old iPhonewith Brushes still on it
An old iPadwith Brushes still on it
A backupof your iPhone or iPad, in iTunes or Finder
A Macthat had Brushes Viewer, which kept copies of paintings sent to it
Or .brushes files you emailed, exported or copied somewhere.
If you have an old iPhone or iPad with paintings on it, don't update or reset it for now.
Get in touch
Tell us a bit about what you have and we'll get back to you. We won't use your email for anything else.
Brushes was made by Steve Sprang. We're not connected with him, or with the app called Brushes on the App Store today.
