Seven Tips for the Procreate App You May Not Know About

With new updates for Procreate coming more frequently, it can be easy to miss some classic time-saving tips to help you smooth out your workflow. Whether you’re already familiar with Procreate, or opening it for the first time, we’ll be looking at our top 7 features and gestures to help you move around the Procreate interface like a pro.

Note: All brushes used throughout this tutorial are available in The Mid-Century Brush Pack for Procreate. You can also get our bestselling Complete Mid-Century Brush Collection for Procreate which includes our entire Mid-Century line of products.

1. Color Palette

A distinct feature of Mid-Century illustration is the use of bold, contrasting colors. When working with a simplistic color palette, it’s important to have easy access to them.

The Color Palette Panel in Procreate is intuitive and easy to use. If you want to sample a color value, tap the square outline icon on the left menu bar to bring up your color picker. Drag this over the color you wish to sample and it will appear in the color circle in the top menu.

💡Top Tip: Another way to pick a color from your document is to tap and hold your finger over the part of your art you want to sample.

Tapping the color circle will reveal the settings. You can then save color values by tapping a blank square within the Color Palette panel.

You’ll notice you have the option to set the Palette to ‘Default’. Doing this will keep the palette active through the other color setting screens.

You can also delete a color swatch - tap and hold on the swatch square and choose ‘Delete’. Or to delete the whole palette, swipe to the left and tap ‘Delete’.

Color Palettes are global and available across all documents.

💡Top Tip:  Procreate 5.0 brought us a Primary and Secondary active color that you can swap between. There is also a color history which keeps a log of your last 10 used colors.

2. Color Drop Fill

Another handy time-saving trick is the color drop feature. Draw an outline around the area you want to fill, making sure the shape is completely closed with no gaps. Drag the color circle from the top menu within the shape to fill the area.

You may want to go back over the area with a textured brush and roughen the edges or add some grain.

It's important have no gaps in the shape outline for this to work properly so use a brush with minimal texture.

The brushes used in the above example were ‘RSCo Dixon HB 2’ for the outline, and ‘RSCo Grain II’ for the grain. Both are available in the Mid-Century Pack for Procreate pack.

💡Top Tip: You can adjust the threshold of your fill be keeping your finger or Apple Pencil on your screen after the color has filled your shape and moving it either right or left to adjust the threshold.

This is useful if you are using a semi-transparent brush which might require a lower threshold in order to fill properly, or a heavily textured brush which might require a higher threshold to fill completely.

3. Liquify

The 4.1 release of Procreate introduced us to the powerful ‘Liquify’ feature. Liquify can be a like a psychedelic time machine, producing crazy graphics that look like portals to another dimension... or when used with restraint, add realistic ripples to shapes and strokes. Perfect for drawing coffee steam or roughening up the edges of an outline!

You'll find the Liquify settings in the drop-down menu, under Adjustments Panel. This will bring up preferences along the bottom of the screen. You can choose between Push, Twirl Right, Twirl Left, Pinch, Expand, Crystals and Edge. There are sliders to adjust the size and pressure as well as distortion and momentum. If you take things a bit too far, you can use the ‘Reconstruct’ setting to knock back the effect or ‘Reset’ to remove it completely.

Brush used ‘RSCo Fine Gouache’ from the Mid-Century Pack for Procreate pack.

💡Top Tip: Procreate 5X brought the ability to adjust filters using your Apple Pencil rather than having the filter apply over the entire layer. This means that you can have greater control over how you apply liquify to your art.

4. Symmetry

Another fantastic feature that came with a previous update, is the Symmetry tool. The Procreate community went wild for it, flooding Instagram with beautiful, intricate patterns. But if mandalas aren’t your thing, you may also find it useful for your regular drawing process.

With Symmetry activated, your design is reflected on the opposite side of your canvas.

To access the Symmetry settings, open the ‘Actions’ panel and under the Canvas menu, turn on the toggle that says ‘Drawing Guide’. Tap ‘Edit Drawing Guide’ (below the toggle). You can choose between Vertical, Horizontal, Quadrant or Radial symmetry. Tap ‘Done’ to return to your canvas.

You can disable the symmetry settings by tapping the layer thumbnail and turning off 'Drawing Assist'.

💡Top Tip: Sometimes you need to add non-symmetrical elements to your work, but don’t want to have to turn off your symmetry guide. On the flip side, you might find that your symmetry guide isn’t active when you make a new layer.

You can solve both issues by tapping on your active layer and tapping “Drawing Assist.” Note that this option will only be available if you have already turned on Drawing Assist from your canvas settings.

5. Quickshape

One drawback for illustrating in Procreate, was always its lack of shape tools. If you wanted to use a circle, rectangle or triangle, you had to draw it in another application, then import it back into Procreate.

But those days are a thing of the past. With a previous update, version 4.2, comes with ‘QuickShape’. This allows you to turn your sketchy shape into a smooth symmetrical one. To do this, complete the shape outline and pause as you close the path. The shape snaps into place like magic!

You can also draw perfectly straight lines by holding your pencil down at the end of the stroke.

💡Top Tip: You can edit your quick shape easily by selecting “Edit Shape” at the top of your screen after Quick Shape mode has been activated. This is useful if you need to adjust the shape or if Procreate has incorrectly guessed which shape you are wanting to make (e.g. a Polyline shape instead of a rectangle.)

6. Brush Switch

If you hold down the eraser tool in the top menu for a couple of seconds, it will swap the brush to the current one you are using for painting (and vice versa). A very simple, but powerful tip!

You can switch between painting and erasing to get some interesting texture results.

7. Alpha Lock to Recolor

There are many times when we need to change direction on a color palette half way through a design. The ‘Alpha Lock’ feature is useful in those situations, allowing you to recolor individual layers. Tap the layer thumbnail and choose ‘Alpha Lock’ (or two finger swipe to the right if you want to get fancy). This now locks the transparency. Next tap your layer again and choose 'Fill Layer'.

You can also use this feature to paint a textured grain onto a layer.

I hope you enjoyed these tips and found something you can use to improve your workflow. I'd love to know your favorite, please leave a comment below and tell us which you liked the best.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference!

All brushes used throughout this tutorial are available in The Mid-Century Brush Pack for Procreate. You can also check out our bestselling Complete Mid-Century Brush Collection for Procreate which includes our entire Mid-Century for Procreate line of products.