I have been using Photoshop recently so I haven’t been using Procreate much. When I opened the Procreate app a few days ago, I realised that there were some changes, I then Googled for an update on Procreate online and learnt that it’s been the biggest release yet. The Procreate 5 has so many new features added, and some are very exciting for me, which makes me want to use the Procreate app more. In this tutorial, I’ll go through some of the updates in this release.
Animation Assist
Let’s you create animations! Turn on animation assist by going to actions, then canvas. You will see an animation assist option, turn it on to activate animation assist. You will see a timeline bar appear at the bottom of the screen.
Each layer or group is considered a single frame. To change the frame order, you can change the order of the layers in your layers panel or use the timeline bar by pressing, holding and then dragging them to your desired location.
You can also quickly select a layer to view or edit by tapping on the frame in the timeline bar.
Play
You can find this option on the left of the timeline bar.
Plays the animation.
Frame Options
Tap on the current frame in the timeline bar and you will see a list of frame options.
Hold duration: lets you adjust how long the frame lasts
Duplicate: lets you duplicate the frame
Delete: deletes the frame
Background: sets the frame as background, can be seen under other layers/ frames. This option is only available for the first frame.
Foreground: Sets the frame as foreground, it will lay on top of all the other frames. This option is only available for the last frame.
Settings
You can find this option on the right of the timeline bar.
Frames per second:
Lets you decide how many frames you want to be played per second
Onion skin frames:
Allows you to see frames adjacent to your current frame. You can change how many frames you can see.
Onion skin opacity:
Set the opacity of the adjacent frames
Blend primary frame:
Show the current frame as an onion frame
Colour secondary frames:
Changes the onion skin frames behind your current frame red and onion skin frames after your current frame green.
Play type:
Lets you decide how the frames are played, there are 3 options: one-shot, loop, ping-pong.
Oneshot: Plays all the frame once and stops
Loop: Plays the frames again and again
Pingpong: Plays the frames from left to right, then from right to left, then repeats like playing ping-pong/table tennis.
Add frame
You can find this option on the right of the timeline bar.
Adds a frame/ layer after the current frame/layer
Brush Studio
Lets you create your own brush with its numerous burhs settings.
To find the brush studio, open the brush panel from the toolbar and select the brush you’d like to customise, tap it again and you will enter the brush studio and make all your adjustments. There are lots of options for you to customise, I will be making a separate post on how to customise your brushes in the future.
Combine Brushes
You can now combine brushes to create new brushes!
To do so, tap on the first brush, then swipe right on the second brush you want to combine with. After that, tap on the ‘combine option’ at the top right of the panel. It’s a good practice to create a duplicate version of the original 2 brushes first before combining them. After, combining, you can head over to the brush studio and make more changes to your new brush.
ABR Import
Allows you to import brushes from photoshop.
Go to Brush Library, tap on the plus sign on the top right, you will be sent to the brush studio. On the top right of the screen, tap on ‘Import’ and you will be taken to your files. Select your ABR brushes to import, you see then see your newly imported brushes in your brush library
Author Cards
This function lets you put in your information together with your artwork.
Goto Actions -> Canvas -> canvas information -> about this artwork
You will be able to add a photo, add your name and your signature.
Valkyrie Engine
A new and more powerful graphics engine, your brushes will feel smoother and more comfortable to paint with
Colour Dynamics
this is an option in the brush studio where you can customise your brushes so that they can change in colour! How cool does that sound?
Colour Companion
You can now drag the colour panel anywhere onto your canvas and have it remain there while you paint! This makes colour picking a lot more convenient and faster.
To drag the colour panel on to your canvas: Hold and drag the small horizontal white line at the middle top of the colour panel. You will see it decrease in size to make more room for painting.
To return the colour panel to the tools bar, tap on the ‘x’ button at the top right of the colour panel.
Colour History
Saves colours you’ve used into a list so you can quickly and easily go back to them. Saves up to 10 past colours.
To see your colour history, go to the colours panel and you should see it in the Disc, Classic, Harmony and value tab. You won’t see it in the Palettes tab.
Colour Profiles
When creating a custom canvas, you now have the option to choose a colour profile: RGB or CYMK. The new CYMK option is great for those who want to print out their artworks onto paper.
Colour Harmony
This new feature helps you select colours according to the type of colour scheme you choose. Follow the colour scheme will help you use colours that are harmonies when used together.
To change the type of colour scheme, open the colour wheel on the top right of the screen. Select the ‘Harmony’ tab at the bottom of the pop-out screen. Then, at the top of the pop-out screen, you will see the name of the colour scheme under ‘Colours’ title, tap on it and you will see all the other colour schemes you can choose from.
Once you’ve picked a colour scheme and a colour, you will see extra pointer circles on the colour wheel, those are colours you can use to achieve a harmonious result, depending on the colour scheme you’ve chosen.
Timelapse Options
The options for video timelapse are now available in the Procreate app! In the past, you would have to go to your Ipad’s settings to make changes in the settings. Now you can find it quickly in the app, go to Actions -> canvas -> canvas information -> video settings to see your video settings, however, you won’t be able to make any changes to the settings once you’ve created a canvas.
You can change the settings when creating a custom canvas, you will see the ‘time-lapse settings’ tab. You can change the video quality and resolution.
Clone Adjustment
You can find the clone tool in Adjustments -> Clone. This tool is great for removing imperfections and still make the artwork look natural.
A bar will show up at the bottom of the screen. You can pick the brush you wish to use for the cloning, change the brush size and change the strength/opacity of the cloning.
You will see a circle in the middle of the screen, drag it to an area where you want the cloning to start, then, with your fingers or a digital stylus, start painting on the area where you want to change to the cloning area.
Try out the Apple Pencil to bring your creative process to the next level on the Procreate App!
These artist gloves for digital painting are a must for me when I paint on the iPad, when I don’t wear the gloves, sometimes the Procreate app sense my palm resting on the screen as 2 fingers tapping and holding and start undoing! Or sometimes it starts colour picking. I’ve tried the different palm support options but I still get the problem sometimes. If you’re having these kinds of problems as well, the gloves may be your solution, it makes you feel and look more professional too!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post and has learnt something new. I will be posting more Procreate related posts and tutorials in the future. Meanwhile, you can look at some of my past tutorials on Procreate by clicking here.
When you purchase something through the affiliate links I’ve provided in the post, I get a small commission (at no extra cost to you!) which helps me continue doing what I love and keep posting tutorials like this one.
You may also be interested in:
13 Responses
I must say that you have done a great job on this article as it would be of help to the public would be of great help to the public as it has been of help to me.when it comes to editing Photoshop is good but to me procreat is better I have been using it for sometime and I has a very good and accessible layout….and it’s also good for beginners too.
Thankyou! Glad you found it useful.
Hi, great post and it seems procreate has really stepped it’s game up. I have a YouTube channel and have been looking for a way to improve my videos and make them more interesting and appealing. I think I am going to give procreate a try, thank you for the informative and detailed post.
Best regards,
Andy.
Thankyou! I hope the Procreate App will help you with what you’re looking for.
Thank you very much for such an amazing article about procreate 5. I appreciate the hard work you in to bring this website together. I have not used procreate 5 for quite some time but these updates are making it more amazing some am going to try it out. I have been more in photoshop but due to these new features of Procreate, I will be using them together.
Thankyou! Glad you enjoyed the post. I too will be using Procreate more now due to its many new useful features.
Many thanks to you for giving us such a beautiful article. Through your article we learned about the Procreate and although I had never used it before. I usually use Adobe software to create animations and in that I have a pretty good idea about Photoshop. But after reading your article I got the idea that Procreate is great. And I found out after reading you that you have found these options by recharging from Google and you have mentioned that this software can easily do animation and brush work. What really impressed me and all the other features you mentioned is that I love it and I want to get to these apps very soon and share my experience with you very soon.
Thankyou! I hope you enjoy using the app. I’d love to hear about your experience with it!
Thank you so much for sharing with us such a beautiful article. I work with graphics. So, I have been using Photoshop. After reading your article, I’m glad I found this review of the Procreate app. I know Procreate is a graphics editor app for digital painting developed. Procreate is designed for multi-touch and the Apple Pencil. your article has really answered all the questions I had about the” Procreate app”. But now, I have more clarity. I’ll try this app. I will definitely share it with my friends. Thanks again and I can’t wait to read more posts like this.
Thankyou! I hope you will enjoy using the Procreate App and find it useful for your projects
I am an avid photoshop user and didn’t have the chance to check upon what other programs are out there. Although I had heard Procreate before I never had the chance to see in detail what this is all about. From your post it seems they have been doing a lot of updates lately and there is a lot of functionality to be found. I think I will take a closer look on this as it seems like an interesting program. Thanks for the heads up!
Thankyou! I hope you find the app useful for you 🙂
You find some of the best stuff love your articles.