Developer Savage Interactive today announced a major update to Procreate that brings sought-after text manipulation features to the powerful iPad-only illustration app.
Procreate 4.3’s new Text feature allows you to import fonts and bring advanced typography to your illustrations and designs. The app lets you use any standard font in iOS, in addition to the three typefaces it ships with (you can drag and drop fonts to add them to your library).
Typesetting supports precision design controls like kerning, leading and baseline.
The guiding principle of Procreate is to preserve the natural feeling of drawing and painting above all else. Savage has re-imagined Text tailored to an illustration mindset and integrated into the multi-touch environment as smoothly as the rest of Procreate’s tools. It’s powerful enough for professionals, yet simple enough for everyone to use.
Zooming, typing, moving or warping text, as well as manipulating complex magazine-like layouts, is a joy thanks to Procreate’s low-overhead Metal-based graphics acceleration.
Here are the other features that the Metal-powered engine makes possible, like applying environmental text on surfaces that may be angled, curved or uneven.
The warp and transform capabilities of the Text tool let you seamlessly incorporate complex environmental text into illustrations with ease. Text remains in vector format when warping and transforming and only rasterizes once changes are committed, leading to sharper results without the rough pixelation common in other programs.
The update includes other improvements and tidbits.
A new Layer Export option allows you to save layers as as a folder of web-ready PNG files or multiple pages in a PDF document. Another cool addition, Export to GIF, lets you export your creations as frames of a looping animated GIF, with frame rates ranging from 0.1 to 60 frames per second and optional background transparency.
Other tidbits include additional blending modes, improved pressure smoothing for supported styli, plus speed improvements and bug fixes.
Here’s a quick overview of everything new and improved in Procreate 4.3:
- Text and typography: Add gorgeous editable typography to your illustration. Refine spacing and alignment with precision sliders and rasterize the results for total control over the finish. The word is your oyster.
- Import fonts: Need to create something with a distinctive typeface? Easy. Just drag-and-drop your favorite fonts into Procreate and find your perfect type.
- Share layers: With new layer export options, you can share your layers as a folder full of PNG images, a multi-page PDF or an animated GIF. Or, use full artworks for each frame by selecting them from the Gallery.
- View single layer: All the single layers (all the single layers), now put your hands up… and view the contents of a single layer in isolation by holding the Visibility checkbox.
- Pressure smoothing: All new pressure smoothing settings will help you create flawless strokes. So smooth under pressure they walk away from explosions in slow motion while asking for your number.
- New layer blend modes: Blend it like Beckham with Darker Color, Lighter Color, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, Hard Mix and Divide.
- Improvements: Smoother, better, faster, stronger—Procreate 4.3 comes with loads of fixes and polish. Daring souls can now turn off undo/redo gestures.