Michal Ždanský The 9,7" touch surface of the iPad directly encourages you to draw something, if you have a pinch of artistic talent in your body. In addition to this, however, you also need a handy application. Procreate belongs to the top.
At startup, Procreate will remind you of the interface of iWork or iLife for iPad, that is, even before the March update. A horizontal gallery with a large preview and a few buttons below it makes it feel like Procreate is directly from Apple. Given the excellent workmanship, I wouldn't be surprised. I've tried several similar apps, including Autodesk's SketchBook Pro, and none of them come close to Procreate in terms of design and speed. Zooming is as natural as photos, and brushstrokes are not laggy. In other applications, I was just bothered by the long responses of the performed actions.
The interface of the application is very minimalistic. On the left side, you only have two sliders to determine brush thickness and transparency, and two buttons to step back and forward (Procreate allows you to go back up to 100 steps). In the upper right part you will find all the other tools: brush selection, blur, eraser, layers and color. While other applications offer a large range of functions that you often never use, Procreate can get by with very little and you won't feel like you're missing anything while using it.
The application offers a total of 12 brushes, each with a slightly different characteristic. Some draw like a pencil, others like a real brush, others serve for various sampling. If you are undemanding, you won't even use half of them. However, if you are among the more demanding artists, you can also create your own brushes. In this regard, the editor offers a wide range of options - including uploading your own pattern from the image gallery, setting the hardness, moistening, grain... The options are truly endless, and if you are used to working with a certain brush in Photoshop, for example, it should not be a problem to transfer it to Procreate.
Blur is a great tool for smooth transitions between colors. It works similarly to when you actually smear a pencil or charcoal with your finger. It was also the only moment when I put down the stylus and used my finger to smudge, probably out of habit. As with brushes, you can choose the style of the brush with which you will blur, with the ever-present sliders in the left part, you then choose the strength and area of the blur. The eraser also works on a similar principle of choosing brushes. It is quite dynamic and you can also use it to lighten areas with high transparency.
Working with layers is excellent in Procreate. In the clear menu you can see a list of all used layers with previews. You can change their order, transparency, fill or some layers can be temporarily hidden. You can use up to 16 of them at once. Layers are the basis of digital painting. Photoshop users know, for the less experienced I will at least explain the principle. Unlike "analog" paper, digital drawing can greatly facilitate the painting process and, above all, possible repairs, by dividing the various elements into layers.
Let's take the portrait I created as an example. First, I put a photo of what I wanted to draw in one layer. In the next layer above it, I covered the basic contours so that at the end I wouldn't find that I missed the eyes or the mouth. After completing the outlines, I removed the layer with the image and continued according to the photo from the cover of the classic book. I added another layer under the contours where I applied the color of the skin, hair, beard and clothes in the same layer then continued with the shadows and details. Beards and hair also got their own layer. If they don't work, I just delete them and the base with the skin remains. If my portrait also had some simple background, it would be another layer.
The basic rule is to place individual elements that overlap, such as the background and the tree, in different layers. Repairs will then be less destructive, contours can be easily erased, etc. Once you remember this, you've won. However, in the beginning, it will often happen to you that you mix up individual layers and forget to switch them. You will have, for example, a mustache at the contours and the like. Repetition is the mother of wisdom and with each successive image you will learn to work with layers better.
Last is the color picker. The basis is three sliders for selecting hue, saturation and darkness/lightness of the color. In addition, you can also determine the ratio of the last two on a colored square area. Of course, there is also an eyedropper for choosing a color from the picture, which you will appreciate especially during repairs. Finally, there is a matrix with 21 fields to store your favorite or most used colors. Tap to select a color, tap and hold to save the current color. I've tried color pickers in a variety of apps and subjectively found Procreate to be the most user-friendly.
Once your image is ready, you can share it further. You email it from the gallery or save it to the Documents folder, from which you can then copy it to your computer in iTunes. The creation can then be saved directly from the editor to the gallery on the iPad. It's hard to say why the sharing options aren't in one place. A big advantage is that Procreate can save non-PNG images also in PSD, which is Photoshop's internal format. In theory, you can then edit the image on the computer, while the layers will be preserved. If Photoshop is too expensive for you, you can do just fine with PSD on Mac Pixelmator.
Procreate only works with two resolutions – SD (960 x 704) and double or quadruple HD (1920 x 1408). The Open-GL Silica engine, which the application uses, can make excellent use of the potential of the iPad 2 graphics chip (I haven't tried it with the first generation), and in HD resolution, the brush strokes are very smooth, as well as zooming in up to 6400%.
You'll find lots of other goodies here, like multi-finger gestures for instant 100% zoom, quick eyedropper by holding your finger on the image, rotation, left-handed interface, and more. However, I found a few things missing from the app. Primarily tools like the lasso, which could quickly fix, for example, a misplaced eye, a brush for darkening/lightening, or palm detection. Hopefully some of this will at least show up in future updates. Anyway, Procreate is perhaps the best drawing app you can buy on the App Store right now, offering a wealth of features and a user interface that even Apple wouldn't be ashamed of.
[button color=red link=http://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/procreate/id425073498 target=”“]Procreate – €3,99[/button]
The lasso is an essential tool and I don't think anyone has it. Without it, these applications are more or less just on the sidelines. I have sketchbook pro.
Photoshop for iPad already has lasso and other useful features. But I admit that it is not the most suitable program for drawing.
Photoshop is just a poor toy with a small resolution, it has quite a lot of competition on iOS, but back to drawing…
SketchBook Pro is lightning fast on the new iPad with absolutely no response. I would mention a similar application called Inspire Pro and the very interesting ArtRage, which is a kind of art simulator and even has special brushes for it. If you want lasso and layers and such. there's also ArtStudio, definitely worth a try.
I bought it and tried it. Compared to SketchBook, I noticed a more pronounced delay during strokes with the stylus, which is quite unpleasant - it even discouraged me from drawing something on it. So SketchBook is better for me. But everyone has their own.
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OK thanks.