Procreate

Before Adobe’s acclaimed Fresco, there was Procreate from Savage Interactive. This powerful iPad app for sketching, painting, and illustrating is a Tasmanian-made digital art studio for creative professionals. Its relatively low cost and accessible features should woo both everyday doodlers and its target audience of professional artists, animators, illustrators, and letterers. Given its low one-time fee, it's easy for artists and would-be artists of any level to justify buying this graphic design app, earning Procreate our Editors' Choice award.

How Much Does Procreate Cost? 

Procreate is still a steal at a flat rate of $12.99 for iPad. Procreate Pocket for iPhone is $5.99. As of this writing, Savage has no plans to introduce an Android or Windows version. 

Procreate’s main tablet-only competitor is the substantial Adobe Fresco, which is free for the basic app. You get a more robust version with a Creative Cloud All Apps subscription, which begins at $35.99 per month.

Other notable drawing and painting apps are desktop programs with a tablet version, and they tend to be more expensive. Some examples are CorelDRAW Standard ($299 flat or included in the CorelDraw Graphics Suite subscription at $269 per year) and Affinity Designer ($18.49 iPad, $69.99 desktop, $164.99 full suite with universal license).

There are also niche competitors that are brilliant at creating effects that few other apps can. A few favorites are Cosmic Brush (free; $6 flat for the full version), Flame Painter for iPad ($89.99 flat), iOrnament Pro (free; $6.99 for Pro), generative particle-simulator drawing in Silk 2 ($2.99), and Adobe Rush (free).

Can My iPad Run Procreate?

Procreate works with Apple iPad running iPad OS 15.4.1 or later and a 1st- or 2nd-Generation Apple Pencil, depending on your iPad model. To enjoy Procreate’s Hover feature, however, you need either an iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation) or iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation) and a 2nd-Generation Apple Pencil.

Procreate doesn't offer cloud storage or backup. Files are stored locally within the Gallery in the app's home screen, but only while the app stays on your iPad. Should you remove the app, your artwork is gone, too. Therefore, it's important to be aware of how much storage you have available on your device and to consider exporting any work you want to keep to iCloud or another cloud storage service, or to an external drive.

Getting Started With Procreate 

Procreate is available only through Apple’s App Store, and purchasing and installing the app is simple. Once you pay your $12.99, you're finished—there is no account setup, pro upgrade, or subscription.

The interface is minimal. There are no tear-off menus as there are in Fresco, which keeps your canvas uncluttered. Occasionally, though, I’d like the option to keep two menus open simultaneously. 

You have three main sections in the interface. First, the top right of the tableau houses the Painting Tools, which has everything you need to begin: Paint, Smudge, Erase, Layers, and Color. Each has many options within its own menu. Second, the left sidebar (you can optionally switch it to the right), holds Modification Tools, such as brush size and opacity sliders, square Modify/Eyedropper button, and Undo-Redo arrows. Finally, at the top left are the robust Editing Tools, which include Gallery to manage work; Actions for sharing and interface settings; Adjustments for color/gradient maps and pro FX like Bloom, Glitch, Chromatic Aberration, Halftone, and Liquify; Selections for selection modification and use; and Transform for scaling and warp meshing.

Everything is clean and simple, and after just a little probing, it all makes perfect sense.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

Learning and Help 

Procreate is breaking new-artist entry barriers with a free Beginner Series for burgeoning artists who aren’t sure how to begin. These step-by-step videos are an empowering introduction to all the basic skills needed for creating art and animation. After that, you might explore the Learn to Procreate Series and, finally, a nicely designed online Procreate Handbook with a search bar and handy content navigation side panel.

It’s always nice to have a little scaffolding to support your efforts, and under the Actions panel, Procreate has it in the form of Grids (2D, isometric, Perspective, and custom), Drawing Guide, and Drawing Assist (which matches your strokes to your chosen Drawing Guide thus removing tedium), and QuickShape which snaps wobbly hand-drawn lines and shapes into perfection.

Page Assist turns your Procreate canvas and all its tools into a multipage interface that allows you to create comics, books, or storyboards—and even open and edit PDFs and export them. Using the layers feature, you can make a realistic-looking project by adding a paper texture to the background layer.

What’s New in Procreate? 

If you have an M2-powered iPad Pro, version 5.3 enables new Apple Pencil interactivity with additional Hover features, including Brush Cursor, Brush Size and Opacity Gestures, Color Drop, Gallery Previews, Freehand Selections, and more. To use the Hover feature, you need either an iPad Pro 12.9 inch model (6th generation) or an iPad Pro 11 inch (4th generation) and a 2nd Generation Apple Pencil.

So what is Hover? It's a feature that creates an informative, contextual cursor display even before the Apple Pencil hits the glass.

When enabled and you Hover the Pencil tip just above the screen, you see a preview of your selected brush's size, shape, texture, tilt, and azimuth (or smudger or eraser). You can also use Hover in tandem with gesture controls to adjust any settings before you begin drawing.

For speedy filling of boundary-edged spaces, one new method is to Hover above the active color swatch in the upper right-hand side of the screen and double tap. Then, you may continue double-tapping to fill in whichever spaces you like with that color. This is the same idea as Adobe Illustrator’s Live Paint Bucket tool. Note that Color Drop with Hover requires iPad OS 16.1 or later.

Savage Interactive announced last year that because the Apple Pencil is so popular, production of third-party styli has decreased, and they will no longer be supported by the app. The only exception is the Logitech Crayon. 

In addition to new hover features, Vector text has finally come to Procreate, but it’s not easy to locate. Tap Actions (the little wrench icon) > Add > Add Text, then tap the text to get options. There are plenty of typeface options, along with the ability to import other typefaces and fonts. I found a surprising number of controls, including kerning, tracking, leading, and baseline position. The text lives on a vector text layer (could more vector-related things be coming soon?), but you can convert it to raster if you want to integrate it into your drawing and apply Procreate’s effects. 

With Text, Apple’s Scribble (handwriting-to-text) has arrived and is fully integrated into Procreate. It makes naming files or layers, for example, a little less cumbersome.

Buried deep in the Procreate release notes (in the App Store) is a hidden tip: Even though the Perspective Guide heading has historically said to tap to create a vanishing point, you can add up to three points.

What Are Procreate's Top Features?

Something Procreate’s main competitor, Adobe Fresco, can’t do is let you paint directly on 3D models. Unique to Procreate is the 3D Paint Feature. If you import 3D models into your Gallery (OBJ or USDZ files with UV attached maps) and open them, the 3D Paint interface appears. Alternatively, you can use one of the models included with Procreate to try out this feature. Note that Adobe does have a solution for this within its Substance 3D Collection, but it requires an extra subscription as it's not part of Creative Cloud.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

Apple gave Savage Interactive a Design Award for inclusivity for supporting and providing a great user experience for people of diverse backgrounds, physical abilities, and languages. Procreate’s admirable suite of advanced accessibility features includes motion filtering for users with tremors, single-touch gestures to accommodate hand mobility limitations, and a new color card palette and notifications for the visually impaired.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

Another differentiator from Fresco is Procreate’s long-standing ability to create and save custom brushes and settings, though Adobe has announced this feature will arrive in upcoming releases of its iPad apps. 

If you want more than the 200 brushes that come standard with the app, a profusion of third-party and user-created specialty brushes for painting, lettering, adding texture, and stamping are available for purchase in the Procreate Marketplace, the App Store, and other online emporiums like Creative Market and Envato Elements.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

If you're into editing or making new brushes, the app’s Brush Studio has an impressive number of brush attributes and properties that can be modified. You can test them right in the DrawingPad on the right side of the screen.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

Although there is ample enchantment within Procreate’s supply of onboard brushes, nothing mystifies quite like Fresco’s Live Brushes—seriously real-feeling oil paint and watercolor emulators that interact with the pixels of Fresco’s virtual canvas or paper almost magically. Conversely, Fresco boasts vector brushes, so it’s clear that each app has its benefits.

Nonetheless, there is plenty to explore in Procreate’s brush lineup. Note that the paint color is the same in the image below. Some brushes are set to have color jitter or transference, which is customizable in the Brush Studio.

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper)

Speaking of perspective, rather than considering ways to make digital tools look and feel like natural tools, I like to think about the things digital tools can do that traditional ones can’t. Although the following image is drawn and lettered from scratch, administering all those dots one at a time (as one would with natural media) might have sent me to the asylum.

(Credit: Shelby Putnam Tupper/Savage Interactive)

Extra Special Effects

With Procreate, you can easily recolor all or part of your work and balance HSB (hue, saturation, and brightness) curves and histograms with a touch of three simple sliders. Experiment with those adjustments to stylize your work.

Gesture-based blurring keeps you from the pulldown-menu doldrums, and with adjustable Gaussian, motion, and perspective blurs, you can add dimension and life to your masterpiece.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

Plenty of adjustment effects await your exploration to help finalize your vision. Create an atmospheric glow with Bloom directly on your image or as a layer effect filter. Add a halftone or glitch effect to add texture and interest. If that weren’t enough, Procreate features Liquify distortion modes like Push, Twirl, Pinch, Expand, and more.

To top all that, if you wish, you can watch an instant replay of your entire project creation—a time-lapse playback of your drawing from beginning to end.

(Credit: Savage Interactive/PCMag)

Procreate in Your Pocket 

Finally, there is Procreate Pocket for iPhone. It won an Apple Best App of the Year, and although the app is well-designed and optimized for the device, the physical phone feels uncomfortably small, especially if you are accustomed to using Procreate on the iPad. Plus, you can’t use the Apple Pencil on your iPhone. Savage’s motto for Procreate Pocket is “Sketch. Paint. Create. Anywhere.” And while that is indeed possible, size does matter.

If you’re looking for alternatives for Android devices, try Tayasui Sketches (free) or ArtFlow: Paint Draw Sketchbook (free with upgrade options).

A Thoughtfully Developed App With Long Legs 

Paying only $12.99 for Procreate feels like a steal. With its bountiful features and effects, brushes and brush types, Animation Assist, and 3D painting, Procreate feels like it's worth even more than its asking price, which isn't something we say too often. That’s why it's an Editors' Choice winner for sketching, painting, and illustrating. So, grab your iPad and get Procreating.