Procreate vs. Sketchbook: An Honest Review
Procreate vs Sketchbook Pro, which will come out the winner?
If you happen to get an unexpected inspiration and a brilliant idea at some point, these are the apps that will help you with that.
The advantage is that we can use them walking, anyplace, anywhere, you only need your phone or tablet.
They are the art studio that will help you make the best sketches, beautiful illustrations, exciting animation, and perfect pictures.
Now the question pops up again: Procreate vs Sketchbook Pro, which application is better?
Well, as for me, I use them both.
Table of Contents
Procreate
The meaning of the word Procreate is to make, to create, and to reproduce.
Procreate app was first time launched in 2011 on the App Store (IOS)and is available in 13 languages: English (United States), English (Great Britain), Arab, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Spanish
You can find more information about its appearance here.
This app is a massive step for humanity.
It is a powerful and accessible application that provides an effect on realistic drawing, sketching, and painting.
What is important is that you can work faster in Procreate than in Photoshop
Professionals, as well as amateurs, can use it.
It’s necessary to say that this application is not for free and made for the iPad.
Now, which iPad do you need for this app?
Firstly, you should consider compatibility with the pencil on Apple.
Opt for the most suitable for your budget, multitasking for the biggest screen, portability, and flow compatibility.
To download the application on your iPad, you can try the app store and check the price, about 10 dollars.
In the Procreate, you can find over 150 brushes and tools, including pencils and inks. You can also download other brushes or make your brushes.
There is also an active forum on Procreate where you can upload pictures for your brushes’ format and texture, but you can also see other users’ brushes.
The Brush Library Have Brushes for:
- Sketching-it contains pencils and pastels that it is beneficial for everyday sketching and artistic planning
- Inking- This includes pens and markers that for excellent contour drawing
- Painting-these include brushes with a painting style that make a nice texture
- Calligraphy-optimal brushes for handwriting
- Airbrushing-here the color is sprayed
- Textures-on this kind of brushes they are symbols, patterns, and textures
- Charcoals- charcoal brush with different size and style
They are also: elements, touchups, vintage, organic, drawing, artistic, water abstract brushes.
This site has 34 Procreate brushes.
The Best Features of Procreate
- High color intensity
- Nice fogging
- Numerous settings for lighting, saturation, and color
- Automatic saving, so you will never lose a job again
- Record your drawings in video form
- Has two user interface options
- Supports large screen sizes
- Individual settings for each brush
- Allows upload for all your favorite fonts
- Adds text to each illustration
- Quick menu with one-touch
Some Disadvantages of Procreate
- No free version
- Available only for iPad
- No animation tools
- Needs some practice to know all the features
Explanation of Some Tools
A powerful tool in this application is layer processing.
We can use it to organize, expand, and preserve our work.
Just as we have multiple layers in Photoshop, so do we have here.
You can find them in the menu and modify their look by mixing them.
To find the layers, you need to go to the upper right corner where the layer icon is:
- When you open a new document, you will see two layers: the first and the background
- Add more layers when you click on the plus sign.
- Lock the layer to store and protect its contents, but you have to unlock it again to make the same changes
- Duplicate one layer by making a copy of the contents to a new layer
- Erase the contents of the layer and rearrange or move it
- Group multiple layers
Do you want to try this?
You can try one of these mixing layers: multiply, darker color, soft light, hard light, brightness, and difference.
The next thing is the masks in the Procreate.
They are used to enter a little more shadow, light, texture, images, and patterns.
The Masks
In this application, they are three suggested options: Alpha lock, Mask and, Clipping Mask.
Each option has its special functions, and it doesn’t matter that their names are similar.
Alpha lock is like a grid with gray color.
Many people mostly use these tools to emphasize shadows and textures and quickly change the colors that fill the layer.
The Mask makes it easy to erase some parts of the layer or refine its shape.
Clipping Masks show as a very non-destructive way to manipulate multiple layers.
You can compare them with Clipping Masks in Adobe Illustrator.
You must mark your color palettes to organize them and make them accessible.
Reviews of Users
Jane 34 years: If you are a good artist or designer, you can rely on this responsive application.
When you use Apple pencil in this application, it is similar to making art on regular paper; it gives you the same feeling.
Of course, it’s the same natural feeling, combined with a large selection of brushes that gives you Procreate.
David 25 years: Most of all, the Procreate app helps me to move files from other devices and locations and in a more natural way to organize my work into a gallery format.
Here I can compose and adapt my artwork with the speed I only dreamed of.
Nikole 30 years: I like it here that I can alternately move back and forth between other applications and platforms, which is the same time required from me, depending on the wishes of my clients or the type of project I’m working on.
Ben 40 years: I can tell you one thing, even there is a million professional art application, this one is the most powerful, flexible, and functional.
Among the many successful professionals, we can mention two of them who use the procreate app to do their masterpiece: the artist Trudi, Nikolas Cole.
What is New in Procreate?
These are some improvements:
- Rearrange the layers with no limit
- PSD file no longer duplicates the text layers
- Your gallery will work non-stop
- Procreate can find your damaged works of art, it will place them in a file
Sketchbook Pro
Sketchbook Pro is a software application released to the public in April 2008.
In the beginning, it was not for free, but later that changes when Autodesk makes Sketchbook free for all users in May 2018, and now it’s available for us all.
Each iPad device has its large touch screen, which is essential for these apps.
That allows us to sketch and paint without dealing with art materials like color, paper, and canvas.
So that why whenever you get inspired, take your mobile art studio so that you can create your masterpiece right away.
Sketchbook Pro has many advanced and modern options, which is why it is one of the best applications in painting from the App Store.
Features of Sketchbook Pro
In the app, you can find six layers of control, as well as several mixed modes.
The application itself provides buttons for returning and repeating errors and tools for a circle, line, and square drawing.
The most essential and challenging tool you can hardly find in other applications is the symmetry tool, not a problem in Sketchbook.
You can use it to draw some objects like faces and do it straightforwardly.
In this application, there is a powerful engine with 65 brushes.
Adjust each brush by adjusting the radius or the distance.
There is also a color wheel that has a specific saturation diamond in its center, which can help you choose a color that you previously had only in your most significant imagination.
To select the color outside of the screen, we recommend the eyedropper tool.
Panels in Sketchbook Pro
The interface on the Sketchbook is well designed and quick to navigate.
You have some panels: Tollbar, Brush palette, Lagoon, Brush puck, Color puck.
The Brush Palette
As the name itself says in this panel, you can quickly access sure brushes:
- Pencil- which is very good for sketching because it’s thin and very soft
- Marker-with these tools, you can draw light over darkness like would like in real life
- Airbrush- acts very precisely, adds color very gently but with vigorous intensity
- Chisel- Tip pen- this tool is for those who do calligraphy with a very bold move
- Ballpoint Pen- use this tool to highlight
- Paint Brush- most basic brushes used to add strong color stains that you can mix with something else
- Inking Pen- very complicated tool, but gives good results for sketching, and painting
- Felt Tip Pen-it works like a thin pencil.
- Smear- quite a well-known toll from Photoshop, used for spreading color
- Sharpen- if you want to sharpen some particular part
- Blur- the strokes you touch, you can blur them with these tools
- Hard Eraser- the word itself explains what is
- Soft Eraser-wiping but in a slightly more elegant way
These are some of the basic types of brushes.
If you need more, you may look for them in the brush library.
There you will find more than one set, and you can download them for free.
Brush Properties
Some brushes can only be edited fundamentally by selecting the brushes and going to the brush properties.
But still, there are excellent properties for brushes where you can try something.
In case you don’t like it, you can go back to the way it was by pressing the restart button.
Brush Puck
This is the shortcut to change the size of the brush.
Lagoon
It is a rotative UI element that represents the center for many useful tools in Sketchbook.
You control it with gesticulated movements, something similar to layer editor.
Layers Editor
Sketchbook has at least two layers contained in this tool.
If you want an excellent base for your image, leave a background layer, and if you don’t, you can turn it off to save the image without the background.
To change the color, click on the white circle on it.
Managing Layers
You can manage layers in these ways:
- Add a segment on the one you already have
- Delete the contents of the layer but to safe the layer itself
- Add a folder with multiple layers. This feature is useful to maintain some order.
- Add outside image in your file
Menu for layers-they are specific options for editing one layer or multiple layers at once.
Color editor-It is one of the more accessible tools: color picker, hue ring, current color, natural color, area of saturation, and transparent color.
Coping library– This is a unique tool that helps us create our drawings with a marker.
The Toolbar
There are additional tools that you may not need.
But if you decide to try them, they will make the process more comfortable and safer.
Some of them are:
- Zoom, moving or rotating the canvas
- Crop-there are squares, lasso, magic wand
- Rapid transformation-you can quickly resize the element, move it, or turn it
- Transformation-this is a box that we can transform by pulling the corners symmetrically or asymmetrically
- Layer with text-in a simple way, you can add text
- Symmetry-this tool is used to draw two halves at the same time but to be precise
- Stable stroke-helps illustrate a very gentle smooth line with an adjustable strength
- FlipBook – is an animation tool
Another tool with an unusual name is the predictable stroke.
For example, when you try to draw something challenging and complicated, this tool tries to anticipate your idea, and help you with the result.
Reviews of Users
Johan 30 years: If you are a beginner, you will love this application because it is straightforward. I especially love the fact that I can buy additional tools without thinking of paying.
Ana 22 years: My phone has a pretty small screen, but with the help of this app, I can draw and sketch quickly. There are so many tools that are easy to adapt, and also, the colors are very practical.
Colin 33 years: For me, this is a necessary app because it gives me a wide range of tools to play with, a pretty stable platform for artwork. This app is a good start for turning creative ideas into a real project.
Sketchbook Pro Painting and Drawing App for Students
From amateurs to professional artists, everyone looks at the positive side of tablets and phones for sketching, drawing, and painting.
Most of these mobile apps are very accessible and versatile.
Of course, it is more practical for students to carry a cell phone in a backpack than a sketch.
These beautiful painting and drawing apps are available for both younger and older students.
Younger students have more engagement options.
Through gesture and interaction with touch, art is more accessible.
For students, these apps offer deep customization and a way to create art for their portfolio.
Moreover, it provides updated experience to student’s and replaces ˝old school˝ methods.
The advantage of the Sketchbook app is that the controls needed for drawing are visible.
All are easy to find.
Everything is well arranged and easy to navigate.
And if the toolbars bother you, when you get inspired, you can hide them right away by pressing the appropriate button.
Procreate App
A considerable advantage of the Procreate app is that it has an incredible number of brushes.
The design of this app is excellent, so you don’t have to bother with its controls, and therefore you do not feel any need to hide them.
If you try both of these applications, you will not regret it.
You will take your first step in the digital drawing world, and I’m sure you will enjoy it.
Final Thoughts
Procreate vs Sketchbook Pro, which will you choose?
We have given you a full comparison of the two apps.
Think about the pros and cons of both apps, your budget, and why you are creating art.
Then, I think you will be able to choose the best app for your needs.
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