Procreate Pocket is the latest version of the highly popular Procreate drawing application for iPhone. Although iPhone clearly lacks support for the Apple Pencil, it still does provide a 3D Touch feature that allows in-built pressure sensitive drawing with your finger or a suitable stylus. While it’s not ideal, Procreate’s drawing apps are still far superior to that of the competing apps. This article looks at some of my preferred features of the application, and how they have improved since the first version of Procreate.
The first major upgrade to Procreate is the “sketches” section that integrates with your Facebook and Twitter accounts to display a collection of your latest art online. As you can imagine, this is a great way for other people to see your latest drawings and get to know who you are as a designer. Just tap the artwork to open it in the App, and you’ll be taken to your Facebook page or to your Twitter stream of the same artwork. You can also select multiple pieces of artwork from your own photo albums or from images on your phone or tablet. A useful trick for those who use the iPhone as their primary device (or as their daily driver) is that you can use your Procreate sketch pad as a page in Safari – a nice alternative to the built-in web browser on the unit.
Of course, the most obvious upgrade for Procreate 3.5 is the inclusion of a complete art studio. In previous versions, you could only add items to your sketch pad and didn’t have access to your computer’s software library. This was fine for a few, but many found it frustrating because they had to exit their current session to move any item from the sketch pad to the complete art studio. This problem has been solved with Procreate’s new design – the whole interface now enables you to drag and drop any object from your computer to the screen, so you can easily rearrange your painting in real time.
One of the best features of the new version is the time-lapse replay option, which lets you capture your creative journey as you work on your art. Each frame of every image is shown in time, so you can zoom in and out whenever necessary. If you like, you can even select specific frames for playback, giving you a real time visual preview of your finished work. It’s a neat feature that really serves two purposes – you get an awesome look at how your images evolve over time, and you can save time so that you can take advantage of the refined creative experience that Procreate provides.
There are a number of other new additions in version 3.5, including a redesigned interface for viewing your sketches in landscape and portrait modes, as well as support for more depth-of-field retouching tools and improved pinch-to-fit functionality. It’s a great package of tools for serious digital artists who want to refine their work. But you don’t need to be a professional artist to use Procreate’s new apps. Kids and young adults can make use of these apps to create their own original digital art pieces.
The new iOS 4 program will also allow you to export your creations as iOS 5 compatible documents. The built-in exporting tool is similar to what you’ll find in the standard procreate app, but the tool now offers a neat option for saving your work in PDF format. This is useful if you’re preparing a paper for a teacher or publishing an article for publication online, as it lets you export your illustrations in standard word or PDF format instead of having to convert them to some other format. Now you can also print your drawings straight from your Procreate account, or print them from your I iOS device.
