When I first saw the Alias’ SketchBook Pro 1.1 reviewer’s guide, I immediately thought about Painter 8. SketchBook Pro is not really a sketchbook at all. It is a full sketch and paint application that will only be attractive to people owning a graphics tablet, a Wacom Cintiq, or a Tablet PC. SketchBook Pro is used by architects, industrial designers, game designers, and digital artists at large. It may not offer the same preset capabilities Painter 8 has to offer, but it delivers exactly what a designer needs.

What does SketchBook Pro lack? Features like Van Gogh-ish overpainting capabilities, for example. Painter 8 has these and many more. The result of these Gogh-ish, Monet-ish and other ishes is always artificial. It is especially good at camouflaging an artist's capacity to be original. Well, you will not find those ishes in SketchBook Pro. Nor will you find the abundance of palettes that will cover up your 1600 x 1200 screen for about one third.

SketchBook Pro is a completely different breed, as I could experience myself from the moment I opened the program. Daunting, that first experience: the digital equivalent of the dreaded white page of paper. A large white area with in the bottom left corner a three-quarter circle containing what Alias calls the "marker menu". Apparently, and according to the reviewer's guide, the marker menu was actually invented by Alias. This menu holds all the brushes, commands and options that SketchBook Pro is capable of. And the program is capable of quite a bit...

The marker menu was clearly designed with a Tablet PC in mind. Using your digitiser pen, you press on one of the icons to reveal a circle of second-level icons that contain the functionality you need. Accessing the second-level menu is done by dragging your pen across the tablet towards the appropriate icon. Lift the pen and the tool or option designated by the icon is selected. For almost every command and tool, Alias has also provided a keyboard shortcut, so users will never find themselves blocked in their options and actions by the interface.

After working a few days with SketchBook Pro, I started wondering why Apple hasn't implemented something similar in their interface, but then I realised that using these menus with a mouse would probably be less efficient, although I'm still not convinced about that. Whatever the case may be, Alias has thought about this menu interface carefully: even the location at the bottom left (or right; you can choose) is optimized for the bio-mechanical characteristics of the human arm.

So, after having examined and scrutinized the marker menu, I could now move on to the real work: sketching and painting with SketchBook Pro. I used a late beta of version 1.1 for the Mac OS X platform. Version 1.1 is the first release to support Mac OS X. I cycled through every brush, pencil, marker and airbrush. On Alias' web site some users of SketchBook Pro testify that they found the digital tablet and pen finally capable of replacing the feel of a real pencil on paper.

Although at some point in my life I was a not unsuccessful painting artist myself (I ultimately chose for another, more comfortable life...), I can't say I will ever find a graphics tablet being capable of replacing the real thing, even if the tablet is a Wacom Intuos 2 and the pen the Deluxe version of the Wacom standard digital pen in brushed aluminium. I always keep feeling the plastic nib touching the equally plastic cover of the tablet. But I must admit SketchBook comes closest of all painting applications I have ever tried or tested.

And indeed, it does come closer to the real-life experience than Painter 8. The latter tends to deposit colour more artificially than SketchBook Pro. SketchBook is also somewhat more responsive than Painter, which is an absolute must in terms of tactile feedback. Does SketchBook support you in any way with your artistic ventures? As I said before, you will not get any preset artistic algorithm that you can apply to your own scribbles. But you can select from Alias' own created background library.

These backgrounds range from simple perspective guidelines to fully prepared calendar setups, the golden triangle, architects' and engineers' sketch blocks, ISO grids, etc. The backgrounds somewhat camouflage the white area in front of you, making the creative process a little less daunting at first. But very soon you realise that you are in charge and that the result will not be anyone's responsibility but yours. SketchBook Pro, in other words, supports the creative process fully, and puts it back in perspective by offering a digital tool chest that closely and fairly accurately mimics the analogue artist's tool chest.

To some people, this will fall short of what they desire. To most artists, this is exactly what they want. To industrial designers, architects and engineers, this is everything they could ask for. Especially as SketchBook Pro also supports annotating by pen. The program has a "Send Mail" option in the File menu and a separate screenshot application that allows users to take a screenshot of anything on their screenshot, then annotate this shot by automatically starting SketchBook Pro itself.

For those who want to experience what I have, Alias has a trial version of SketchBook Pro on their web site.