Procreate is a popular digital art making app which offers an extensive library of brushes for different use cases. But sometimes we may need to make a brush with all the functionalities, custom to our particular requirements and it can increase productivity and streamline the workflow. Let us discuss how you can make your own customized brushes in Procreate.
Creating a New Brush in Procreate
To make a brush in Procreate for Windows, follow the given steps.
- Open canvas in Procreate app.
- Go to the Brush Library by clicking on the “Brush” icon present at the top right corner of the canvas.
- Now we have to create a new folder or brush-set in the Brush Library where our new brush will be placed. To create a brush-set, scroll down the existing brush-sets present at the left side of the Brush Library. Here you will see a blue “Plus” icon, click on it and give a name to your brush-set and after that a new brush-set will be created.
- Now, in the new brush-set click on the “Plus” icon preset at the top right corner of the Brush Library.
- After that, a window called “Brush Studio” will open where you can do customizations and add functionalities to your brush.
- After doing any customizations, click on “Done” button at the top right corner of the screen.
- You can test your customization in the “Drawing Pad” on the right side of the screen.
- After these customizations, go to the “About this brush” function at the bottom left corner and add name & logo to your new brush and then click on “Done.” Then your brush will be created and you can access it in the Brush Library.
You can do the following customizations to your brush.
Procreate Brush Settings
Procreate’s Brush Studio offers lots of settings and options to customize your brushes, based on your needs. In the Brush Studio, you will find the following features.
Shape
Shape is like a stamp or a unit of stroke. After entering the Brush Studio, first you have to select your brush’s shape in the “Shape” section. This option allows you to add different shapes from the inbuilt source library or you can also add a shape from your photo/file to your brush.
To add a shape to your brush, go to: Shape > Edit (top corner) > Import > Import a photo/Import a file/Source library. After selecting the shape, tap “Done” at the top right corner.
There are the following options to customize your brush’s “Shape.”
Input Style
This decides how a stamp will behave on the canvas.
- Touch Only – In this style, with “Touch Properties” setting you can rotate the stamps in a stroke with the help of the “Rotation” slider. Touch Properties will only work with “Touch Only” input style.
- Azimuth – This input style is exclusive for the Apple Pencil. When you turn it on, it will rotate the stamps based on the angle you are holding your pencil in.
Shape Properties
- Scatter – It rotates your stamps at different angles randomly and you can adjust it with its slider.
- Count – It increases the stamp count at a stamp point in the entire stroke.
- Count Jitter – It randomizes your stamp count number on different stamp points on the entire stroke. For example, if you set your “Count” six then, on the entire stroke, the number of stamps on different stamp points will be randomized and will range from one to six. The degree of randomization depends on the percentage of “Count Jitter.”
- Flip X and Flip Y – Turning the particular toggle on will flip each stamp in a stroke, horizontally or vertically.
Stroke Path
This setting helps you customize your brush stroke and you can get three different options to do it.
Spacing
With the help of Spacing, you can adjust the space between each shape or stamp in a stroke. Decreasing the spacing will give a smooth continuous look to stroke.
Jitter
Increasing Jitter will cause a scattering effect and give a rough look to the edges of the stamp. When we turn it off, it smoothly aligns the stamps in a stroke.
Fall off
When you start your stroke, it has full opacity, Fall off gives a fade off effect at the end of the stroke. Percentage of Fall off decides how rapidly your stroke will fade off.
Stabilization
This option helps stabilize/smoothen the brush stroke.
Streamline
With the help of this option, you can smoothen any wobbles in your line. It is useful for inking and calligraphy brushes. You can adjust it by its two settings.
Amount
Increasing the amount will give a smoother look, while turning it off will give a natural look.
Pressure
It controls the pressure sensitivity of your stroke and if you increase this slider, then you will have to give more pressure to draw a stroke.
Stabilization
Amount
Stabilization takes a moving average of your stroke, draws it on the canvas, and makes it smoother and straighter, but sometimes it can get too smooth. Stabilization depends upon the speed of your stroke.
Motion Filtering-
Amount
Motion Filtering uses a more advanced algorithm than “Stabilization” and it does not depend on the speed of the stroke.
Expression
It only works when “Motion Filtering” is on. And if you feel that while using “Motion Filtering,” you have lost the expression from your stroke, then you can use the “Motion Filtering Expression” to turn back up your expression. You can alter the amount of Expression you want your strokes to have, by adjusting the slider.
Taper
This option allows you to adjust the thickness and opacity at the beginning and end of your stroke.
Pressure Taper
This feature only works if you are using the Apple Pencil because it has inbuilt pressure sensitivity and responsiveness. Pressure taper helps you lengthen the existing taper artificially and give you a natural feel of pencils & brushes.
Pressure Taper Slider
With the help of this slider you can adjust the length of the taper at the beginning and end of a stroke.
Link Tip Sizes
Enabling “Link Tip Sizes” ensures an equal amount of taper at the beginning and end of the stroke.
Size
This option decides how quickly your taper transitions from thick to thin. The more the size, the quicker this transition will happen.
Opacity
This allows you to adjust the opacity of the ends of a stroke.
Pressure
It allows more natural fade. If you increase the pressure on your Apple Pencil, then you will get less fade taper and if you decrease the pressure on your Apple Pencil, then it will give you a more faded end as like we are using a real brush and canvas.
Tip
Increasing the “Tip” value using its slider, the taper of a stroke behaves like it is made with a brush having a thick tip and decreasing it looks like it is drawn with a brush having a fine tip.
Touch Taper
This option is useful when you are using a third party stylus or your finger to draw your art as they do not have a pressure sensitivity functionality. All the other settings of Touch taper work the same as the Pressure taper.
Touch Taper Slider
With the help of this slider, you can adjust the length of the taper.
Link Tip Sizes
Toggling this option ensures that the same length of the taper is at the both sides of the stroke.
Size
It adjusts the thickness of the taper on a stroke.
Opacity
This option allows you to adjust the opacity of the taper at the both ends of the stroke.
Tip
In low Tip settings, it looks like the taper is made by a brush, with a thin tip. With high Tip settings, the taper looks like it is made with a thick tip.
Grain
Grain adds a texture to your brush. To add grain to your brush, go to Garin > Edit > Import > Import a photo/Import a file/Source Library. After importing the texture, click on “Done” at the top right corner of the screen. There are various options available to adjust the Grain of your brush.
Grain Behaviour
There are two different methods to adjust the Grain Behaviour of your brush.
1. Moving
In this setting, the brush behaves like the texture is inbuilt in it and the impressions of the texture depend upon how you drag your bush on the canvas.
- Movement – Lowering the Movement causes the texture to be dragged more on the canvas when making a stroke.
- Scale – It helps you adjust the size of the texture within a shape or stamp.
- Zoom – When your Zoom slider is all the way to the right, then it will be adjusted to “Cropped,” which means your texture will remain the same, no matter what your brush size. But if you move the slider all the way to the left, then it will change to “Follow size,” which means when you change (Increase or Decrease) your brush size, the size of the texture will also change.
- Rotation – With this option, you can rotate your texture in the brush’s shape.
- Depth – It adjusts the visibility of the texture in a stroke or stamp.
- Depth minimum and Depth jitter – These both settings work together. Depth Jitter randomly alters the visibility of grains in each stamp of a stroke. And Depth minimum will set the lowest point of contrast when you are adjusting the Depth jitter.
- Offset Jitter – Toggling it on will offset the position of the grain with every unique stroke and give an organic effect.
- Blend mode – With the help of this, you can control the blending of grains with the underlying color of the brush.
- Brightness and Contrast – These options help you adjust the brightness and contrast of the grain.
2. Texturized
In this setting, the texture will be static on the canvas and the position of the texture will not depend on how we drag the brush.
In the Texturized setting, all the customization options (Scale, Depth, Blend mode, Brightness, and Contrast) work the same as in “Moving.”
Grain Filtering
It is used to soften the grain edges and can be used in both “Moving” and “Texturized” modes. There are three options for Grain Filtering.
- No filtering – Does not soften the edges.
- Classic filtering – Use the settings from the earlier version of Procreate to soften the edges.
- Improved filtering – Use the settings from the recent version of Procreate to soften the edges.
Rendering
Rendering is how a layer of paint will react with the canvas and other layers of paint.
Rendering mode
- Light Glaze – It gives a more dilute look and it is lightest and Procreate’s standard rendering mode.
- Uniformed Glaze – It gives a slightly intense effect as compared to Light Glaze.
- Intense Glaze – It gives a more pigmented effect as compared to the previous modes.
- Heavy Glaze – This mode retains the opacity of paints between the two colors.
- Uniform Blending – It gives a Wet mix effect and a lot more pigments for the color as compared to the other previous modes.
- Intense Blending – It is the heaviest rendering mode offered by Procreate which gives thick color to stroke.
Blending
- Flow – Flow determines the amount of paint coming from the brush. As the value of Flow increases, the amount of pigment coming from the brush also increases.
- Wet edges – It increases the pigmentation at the edges of the stroke as compared to the middle of the stroke.
- Burnt edges and Burnt edges mode – It will give a color burn effect at the edges of the stroke. And the Burnt edges mode gives lots of options to adjust the blend mode for the Burnt edges.
- Blend mode – There are multiple options to set the Blend mode for the entire stroke and you can choose from them as per your need.
Wet Mix
This helps you adjust how different colors interact with the brush and the canvas.
- Dilution – It determines the amount of water in the brush’s paint. Increase in dilution increases the amount of water and decreases the amount of pigment in the brush’s color and gives a watercolor effect.
- Charge – The amount of Charge will decide how much paint your pencil will retain like a real brush.
- Attack – Value of Attack determines the amount of paint held by the Canvas. Higher the percentage of Attack, more paint will be retained by the canvas.
- Pull – It will help you determine how much of your paint should be smeared across the canvas when you are drawing a stroke.
- Grade – It adjusts the contrast of your brush texture.
- Blur – With the help of “Blur,” you can adjust the amount of blur in your brush strokes.
- Blur jitter – It adds a random blur effect to the stroke and the amount of blur varies across the entire stroke.
- Wetness jitter – It adds a random dilution or wetness effect to the brush and the amount of wetness varies across the entire stroke.
Color Dynamics
With this feature, you can change your brush’s color properties (hue, saturation, lightness, darkness, secondary color) based on different pressure, tilt, and rotation settings. You can also adjust your stamps and stroke color properties and they will automatically be changed as you draw. And you can apply these settings in your desired combinations.
Stamp Color Jitter
With this option you can randomize your different color properties in stamps of a stroke and they will keep changing automatically.
- Hue – As you increase the hue and draw something on the canvas, each stamp will deviate from your chosen brush color randomly. This effect shows great when there is enough spacing between the two stamps in a stroke. As you increase this value, the randomness of the color will increase.
- Saturation/Lightness/Darkness – Increasing them with their respective sliders will cause the deviation from your chosen brush settings (Saturation/Lightness/Darkness) and add different values of a particular property to each of the Stamps randomly.
- Secondary Color – This option will randomly select colors for each stamp from the selected Primary and Secondary colors.
Stroke Color Jitter
Stroke Color Jitter will work the same as the “Stamp Color Jitter” but it will work on the entire stroke instead of a stamp.
Color Pressure, Color Tilt, and Color Barrel Roll
With the help of these settings, color properties (hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Secondary Color) change randomly in a stroke by applying varying pressure, tilt, and rotation to the Apple Pencil in Color Pressure, Color Tilt, and Color Barrel Roll respectively. Color Barrel Roll will only work if you have an Apple Pencil Pro.
Dynamics
This setting does not depend on the pressure and tilt of the Apple Pencil and will be functional if you draw with your finger.
Speed
With speed, the appearance of your stroke will change. If you set the size and opacity to 0%, the speed will not affect the size and opacity of the stroke.
- Size – If you increase this slider to 100%, then drawing fastly will produce a thinner stroke and vice versa.
- Opacity – If you increase this slider to 100%, then drawing fastly will produce a stroke with low opacity and vice versa.
Jitter
It will cause the random alteration in size and opacity of the stroke, depending upon their percentage values in their respective sliders. It does not depend on speed.
Apple Pencil Settings
Apple Pencils have pressure and tilt sensitivity, which can be used to change different properties of the brush, depending upon the amount of pressure and tilt.
Pressure
You can change the Size, Opacity, Flow, and Bleed under varying pressures. For example, if you set your opacity slider to max, a drawing with low pressure will give a transparent look and with more pressure, it will give an opaque look. Similarly, if you increase the size to max, then less pressure will give a thinner stroke, while more pressure will give you a thicker stroke.
Tilt
Like varying pressure with varying tilt, you can adjust various properties such as Opacity, Gradation, Bleed, and Size.
Properties
This option allows you to set up different brush settings for preview and also sets up how your new brush will interact in the Procreate interface.
Brush Properties
- Use Stamp Preview – Toggle this on if you want to preview your brush as a Stamp instead of a stroke in the Brush Library.
- Orient to Screen – This is applicable, when you have distinct strokes for up and down. When you toggle it off, the brush will work consistently, irrespective of the orientation of your canvas. But if you toggle it on, the stroke’s properties will depend on the orientation of the canvas.
- Preview Size – This controls the preview size of the brush in the Brush Library.
- Smudge Pull – With this tool you can adjust the smudge effect of a brush.
Brush Behaviour
In this section, you can choose minimum and maximum values of your brush opacity and size. After choosing the maximum and minimum values for opacity and size, you can not adjust the value more and less than their maximum and minimum value respectively.
About This Brush
After applying customizations to your brush, it’s time to give it a name, add a logo, and a sign to your new brush. After opening the “About This Brush” section, a window will open up, where you add these particulars by touching on the specific element. After adding, click “Done” at the top right corner of the screen.
Making a brush in Procreate can help you customize your drawings and artworks to another level. And, while the process can be overwhelming- it’s always worth it. The techniques shared above will help you make your unique brushes in Procreate and add life to your art. And that’s what I wanted to help you with today. You’re welcome! 🙂