Procreate

What is Procreate?

Procreate is an award-winning illustration, sketching, and painting app made exclusively for iPad. You may be more familiar with other programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. The main difference between Procreate and Illustrator is that Procreate is a raster graphics editor while Illustrator is vector based. The main difference between Procreate and Photoshop is that Procreate is used to make original art while Photoshop’s primary function is photo editing, though it does offer many other features.

What is Procreate Used For?

Because Procreate is a digital art app, you can use it to create a ton of different kind of art. You can use it for hand lettering, graphic design, digital watercolor art, digital sketching, animation and more. Procreate has so many tools built into the app, the options are endless!

I use it to create digital art for stickers, SVG files for Cricut, and digital app icons for iPhone, among many other things. It is my favorite iPad app, and I love sharing what it can do with my followers.

Procreate is an invaluable tool for crafters – if you want to create your own designs, I encourage you to try Procreate! It’s as simple as drawing with a pencil and paper, but your designs are automatically digital and you can use them seamlessly with other programs.

System Requirements

Procreate works with Apple iPad running iPad OS 14.4 or later and a first- or second-generation Apple Pencil, depending on your iPad model. Procreate 5.3 will require Apple's M2 chip. For this review, I tested the latest version available: 5.2.9.

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.

Features of Procreate

Procreate comes with a ton of different features, and some of my favorites are:

• Custom Canvas
• Brush Customization & Brushes
• Custom Color Palettes
• Layers (similar to Adobe Photoshop)
• Pressure Sensitivity
• Font Compatibility
• Photos App Compatibility

Pros:

• Save money. It is a lot cheaper than Photoshop.
• It has many essential features that Photoshop provides and artists love, such as masks, layers, etc.
• Combined with the Apple Pencil, it simulates real-life painting experiences that many artists love.
• Other than the built-in brushes, you can create your brush or customize the existing ones. In addition, there are many third-party brushes online for purchase.
• Stimulating creativities. Digital art is comparatively new and there are fewer established techniques than traditional mediums like oil painting, etc.
• Easy to share online. You don’t need to figure out how to take a good picture of your painting because the exported image is always clear.
• The end product can be printed onto various sized paper or canvas, with limit though, see the cons below.

Cons:

• My biggest complaint about Procreate is that it can not create high-resolution (300+ dpi) images in large print (20+ inches). When you increase the pixel numbers the available layers reduce. I'm pleased to say that Procreate has since made significant improvements in this area. It now supports image creation up to 36 inches with a resolution of 300 dpi, making it an excellent tool for creating large, high-quality prints (updated on March 18, 2023).
• It gets slower when you have created more paintings in the app. It simply stops working at some point. I have also found some workarounds. Let me know if you are interested to learn more.
• The simulated brushes for watercolor, oil painting, or acrylic painting do not work like the real thing, even though they are reasonably close. However, they have their charms in my opinion.