The popular Procreate art app brings the iPad experience to your iPhone

The versatile, award-winning drawing and illustration software Procreate Pocket for iPhone has been updated on the App Store with a bunch of new features, some of which used to be exclusive to the iPad edition of the app. The refreshed app also includes a totally new interface and the Valkyrie graphics engine that “moves as fast as you can sketch, paint or draw.”

The announcement from developer Savage says Procreate uses iOS 14’s technologies to implement Home screen widgets and let you paint your face in augmented reality, in real-time.

Featuring the dark interface from the iPad edition, Procreate Pocket now uses a card system which has freed up some valuable screen real estate for your canvas.

Other perks include importing Photoshop brushes, the Animation Assist feature from the iPad, using iPhone to capture colors around you, precise object alignment and much more.

How to get Procreate Pocket 4.0

This update is free to all current users of the app. As for new customers, they can download Procreate Pocket 4 for $5 from the App Store.

A screenshot collage showing off various new features in Procreate Pocket 4.0 or iPhone

For more information about Procreate, visit the official website at procreate.art.

Release notes for Procreate Pocket 4.0

  • Dark interface: The flagship Dark interface from iPad returns.
  • Valkyrie graphics engine: The new standard in performance comes to Procreate Pocket. The Valkyrie graphics engine moves as fast as you can sketch, paint or draw.
  • Brush Studio: Harness the power of the Procreate Brush System with the all new Brush Studio. Use over a hundred new settings to customize a brush or create your own from scratch.
  • Animation Assist: Procreate’s powerful, yet easy to use animation tool now makes its debut on iPhone. Create rich illustrative animations, looping GIFs and snappy animatics.
  • Color Harmony: Pick from Complementary, Split Complementary, Analogous, Triadic and Tetradic for beautiful color combinations every time
  • All-new filters: Get the perfect finish with all of Procreate’s stunning effects now on your iPhone including Glitch, Chromatic Aberration, Bloom, Halftone and Noise filters, along with Gradient Maps and an advanced Clone tool.
  • Reference companion: Always keep your composition in focus while you paint in the details. Import a reference image that will stay by your side; ready to provide inspiration and colors.
  • FacePaint: Use AR to paint straight onto your face with every Procreate Pocket feature available.
  • Palette capture and SwatchDrop: Capture the colors around you. Create custom Palettes full of vibrant swatches or import your Adobe ACO and ASE palettes. Drop swatches directly onto your canvas for faster fills.
  • New transform and snapping: New Transform brings total accuracy to Procreate Pocket. Use Snapping to precisely align objects to your canvas and layers. Now scale and stretch from any orientation with Bounding Box Adjust.
  • Selection color fill: Boost your workflow by automatically coloring selections. Add, remove or change colors instantly using any of the selection tools.
  • Combine brushes: Swipe two individual brushes and tap Combine to make a completely new and unique brush.
  • ABR import: You can import your favorite Adobe Photoshop brushes and they’ll also paint faster than they do in Photoshop.

There are also many little things worth mentioning:

  • New importable CMYK and RGB ICC profiles
  • Color dynamics
  • New private layer
  • Custom QuickMenu profiles
  • Redesigned copy and paste menu
  • Crop and resize snapping
  • Text numeric input
  • New font companion
  • Quick-launch widget on iOS 14
  • New brush rendering modes
  • New grain blend modes
  • HEVC Time-lapse with alpha
  • Animated Transforms
  • ABR brush import
  • New Text Selection appearance
  • Improved memory handling
  • Increased smudge sampling performance
  • New Blur brushes
  • New Brush author card
  • New create canvas system and canvas information
  • Improved GIF export and new GIF dithering options
  • Create reset points for brushes

According to Savage, your Pocket has never been this dark, this big or this powerful.

Procreate on iPad

The iPad edition of Procreate has recently received a major 5.0 update.

Aside from the new CMYK and RGB ICC profiles for print, along with a 10-step Color History palette, Procreate 5 for iPad includes rich brush customization, an Animation Assist feature, the ability to import brushes from Photoshop and much more.

An iPad screenshot showing the new features in version 5.0 of the Procreate art app

Procreate for iPad is a $10 value in the App Store.