Creative Bloq Awards 2023: software and drawing tablets winners named

Xencelabs did it again this year, scoring a second consecutive Creative Bloq Drawing Tablet of Year title. This year it took the award for its Pen Display 24, which the judges praised for its professional quality, ease of use and wealth of accessories.

Read our Xencelabs Pen Display 24 review

Turning specifically to pen displays, the Xencelabs Pen Display 24 logically also picked up the award for the luxury category here. Again, the judges praised the overall drawing experience and agreed that the device cemented Xencelabs' presence on the market.

Read our Xencelabs Pen Display 24 review

The budget pen display category was won by the XP-Pen Artist 13. Our panel found the display to be excellent value, with superb stylus tech and a vibrant, glare-free display. They also welcomed the compatibility with ChromeOS and Android.

Read our XP-Pen Artist 13 (2nd Gen) review.

Moving on to graphics tablets, Xencelabs won the luxury category here too, with its Xencelabs Small Bundle. The Medium bundle won Drawing Tablet of the Year in 2022, and our panel found the smaller version to be well adapted for travel, coming with two excellent stylus pens and a high-quality travel case. 

Read our Xencelabs Pen Tablet Small review

On the budget side, our judges were impressed with the value offered by the new small drawing tablet added to Wacom's One range. As well as the great price, they appreciated the easy setup and portability.

Read our guide to the best drawing tablets

For a second consecutive year, Adobe's Photoshop has been named Software for the Year in the Creative Bloq Awards. Our judges agreed that the recent integration of Adobe Firefly-driven generative AI in the beta version will ensure it keeps its place as the industry standard tool for a range of disciplines.

Read our Photoshop 2023 review

Adobe swept the board in the software categories at this year's Creative Bloq Awards, with Photoshop alone picking up three wins. The judges recognised the usefulness of new AI-powered tools like Generative Fill and Generative Expand for speeding up workflows in digital art.

Read our Photoshop 2023 review

Adobe also triumphed in the video editing software category with the latest version of Premiere Pro. Our judges were of the opinion that the program remains the best option around for productivity enhancements, collaboration features and tools for fine-tuning footage.

See our guide to the best video editing software

Adobe's veteran vector art tool Illustrator walked away with this year's award for best software for graphic design. Again, Adobe was praised for its constant rolling out of new features, in particularly for 3D work in this case.

Read our Adobe Illustrator review

Our judges also found Photoshop's new text-to-image generative AI tools to be a game changer for photo editing, along with Adobe's neural filters. Photoshop has been around for a long time, but the panel agreed that Adobe's innovations have kept it at the top of the game.

Read our Photoshop 2023 review