50 Procreate tips
In this video tutorial we’ll walk through over 50 Procreate tips – several that will help you get really comfortable working and experimenting with color. We’ll also go over one essential concept when working with any image.
What You’ll Need to Follow Along
To experiment with and practice the tips in this video, this is what you’ll:
- iPad: if you’re just getting into digital calligraphy, the iPad is a great device. Of the latest models I’d recommend the iPad Air (13″ or 11″), jumping into the iPad Pro versions (11″ or 13″) if you need the Pro features offered in those models
- For a full review of the of the different iPad models and features check out my Best iPad for Procreate in 2024 Article.
- Apple Pencil: The Apple Pencil is the best way to replicate the feeling of natural writing with an iPad – just be careful to get the right model that is compatible with your iPad. Here are links to the models currently available (I included a detailed look at all of the different Apple Pencils in the video referenced in my Best iPad for Procreate in 2024 Article):
- Apple Pencil Pro
- Apple Pencil (2nd Generation)
- Apple Pencil (1st Generation)
- Apple Pencil (USB-C) (Note that this version doesn’t support pressure sensitivity, so, although it’s compatible with several iPads, it’s the version I least recommend)
- Procreate App
An Essential Skill – The Histogram
Learning and understanding how to work with histograms is one of the most valuable skills in working with images – especially when making digital art or working with scanned or digital photos.
Technically, “histogram” is a generic term for a type of graph that helps us to visualize a range (aka a “distribution”) of information.
If we apply this idea to the world of working with art and photos, an image histogram helps us to visualize the range of tones that are in a digital image.
How does it do this? Great question…
Whenever we’re working with digital images (whether they’re pieces of art or photos) we’re always dealing with pixes.
When we take a photo with a camera (from your phone to a fancy DSLR camera), the sensors record the image with a specific resolution (a total number of pixels arranged in a grid). This is what we’re referring to when we talk about how many Megapixels (usually abbreviated as “MP”) a camera has. One “Megapixel” is 1,000,000 pixels.
Each one of these tiny little pixel squares has a certain tone, ranging from dark to light, that makes the overall picture.
Coming back to the concept of Histograms – these graphs let us visualize the range of tones of an image by counting/grouping how much of each tone shows up in the images.
The horizontal axis of the graph represents the full tonal range (from black on the left end to white on the right, with all of the intermediate grey tones in the middle).
The vertical axis shows the total number of pixels for each tone. So, we’d expect the histogram for a darker image to show a grouping of pixels on left side of the graph without too many in the lighter areas. The opposite would be true of a lighter image.
Here are a couple of examples:
The highest peak is on the left side of the histogram, which represents the darkest tones of the image. The brighter parts (the white ink that makes up the image of the Joker) are more varied in tone from greys to white and run along the bottom of the graph.
This image is very bright, contains no black, and very few light tones. Most of the tones are grouped on the right, brighter section of the histogram.
In the video, we walk through the process of creating a rough histogram for the featured image and I show where to find a the actual histogram of your work in Procreate.
PS – you may have noticed, especially in the example histogram for the bright image, that there are also red, blue, and green groupings.
I get into a lot of details about working with color in this video and post, but in addition to histograms of the different dark and light tones in an image, most programs (including Procreate) will also show histograms of the red, green, and blue colors that make up the image.
50+ Procreate Tips
While walking through the process of building and understanding histograms and working with some of the incredibly fun color tools in Procreate, I also show over 50 helpful tips for working with the app.
Here a few examples of the tips covered in the video:
- Working with and arranging your image library in the gallery view
- An easy method to quickly recolor your art, allowing you to explore and experiment with different variations and ideas easily
- How to enhance the colors of your work – making them more bold, saturated, and bright
- How to quickly create a pixel duplicate of your entire image on a single layer (to use in savings experimenting with different ideas and looks)
- How to create more subtle, filtered and stylized looks for your art
- How to create custom color gradients
- …and tons more
Note: This post and the photos within it may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the link, I may receive a commission at no extra charge to you.
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