How to Use Procreate 5X: Fresh Filters, Features, and More

1. How to Use Procreate 5X: Fresh Filters, Features, and More: Procreate released a new update, Procreate 5X. It's full of great new updates and some fun new features. But where do you find them? Where is that private layer? What do you actually do with all those new selection fill tools? What even are all the new features? If you're looking for a quick way to get up to speed on all the new features on Procreate 5X, this is the class for you. If you're new to Procreate, I'd recommend checking out my Intro to Procreate class first. We're not going to go over the basics here, we're going to cut straight to the chase. What are the new features? Where can you find them, and tips and tricks for taking advantage of them. Let's get started. 2. Reference Panel and Private Layers: One of the new features I'm most excited about is this new reference image. If you tap on the wrench icon and you go to the Canvas tab, there's this little toggle button that says reference. This is going to pull up a new floating menu which you can drag and move. You can also resize. You can zoom in and zoom out this reference image. This is super cool to me because a lot of times I will be working on very fine details in my image and I can't tell if it's actually noticeable or if it's like something that I can only see when I'm really zoomed in. So I end up zooming out like this and then zooming back in quite a lot. With this reference image, I can see if what I'm doing has an impact just by glancing instead of having to zoom in and out, which is really really useful. A really cool feature of this new reference image is that you can actually color drop from the reference panel. I can grab new colors directly from there, which is brilliant. This really is a big advantage over using the split screen. You can still use the split screen, of course. If I can drag and drop Pinterest over here, then I can have some Pinterest images over here, which I can reference back to. That's really nice, but I can't I-drop from another window. There is a canvas option, there's also an image option. If I tap on the image, I can import an image from my photo gallery. If I grab this image right here, now I have a new reference image that is not my Canvas. I can still grab colors and I can use this as a new reference. This is really nice because I've got my reference in this space, but it's not going to show up on my timeline. What they've really done with this nice little floating menu is that where you created like a standalone workspace. I can have my palettes and my colors all in one little floating menu and I can have my reference image and another floating menu and I can just work over here to my heart's content. A similar feature is the new private layer. Private layer is really cool because this will not show up in your time-lapse. Privately, if you go to the wrench icon and you go to the Add tab, and you see there are these Insert a file, Insert a photo, and Take a photo. If you swipe on this to the right, there is an option that says insert a private file. I'm going to swipe to the right on Insert a photo. I'm going to insert a private photo and I'm going to grab this from my library and it's going to insert a new layer. If I go to my layer panel, I can see that this is called private. What this means is that this layer, this will not show up in your time-lapse. 3. Color Updates: SwatchDrop, Auto Palettes, and Selection Color Fills: If you are a fan of the color drop function in Procreate, you are going to love this new update. Now instead of having to grab the color from up here, you can actually grab it from your swatches. I can grab a color from here and then drag and drop it over there, and drag this new color and drop it there, and drag another color and drop it there. Instead of having to grab a color, and then come up here, and then grab a color and come up here. I can just move straight from my palette. Just like when you're using the color ball over here, you have to drag this guy over. You don't want to just swoosh, like it takes a second for it to pick up, and then you drop it in. Another cool update to the colors is that if you create a new pallet, there are some new options here. You can create a new pallet, which is just the same as it was in the old version. You can create new from camera, and this is very exciting. Let's grab this little rainbow that I've got right here, and check this out, how it is creating a color palette for me. If I take a snapshot there, boom, it has created a fresh new color palette for me. You'll also notice there's a "New from file" and "New from photos". I can now come in here and grab a photo reference, and it will automatically create a color palette from that photo reference for me as well. I'm sure these new functions are going to save me a lot of time in choosing new color palettes. Another fun color setting that they've now added is if you go to the selection tool, there's this new "Color Fill" button in here. I'm going to draw another one of these little wheat kind of shaped objects. When I tapped to close this, it's going to just automatically fill that selection with color. So this can be a huge time saver. You can turn this on or off, and you can also even switch the color to anything in your pallets, or even anything in here. This can be really nifty. You can do multiple selections at the same time. That is super convenient. Another fun way to use this tool, you can go to your ellipse section here, and if I create a circle under this light, and I've got color fill on. If I tap on "Feather" I can push this all the way out and it's going to feather that selection. The closer I get you can see it just created like a fuzzy edge. But the more I go out, I create this cool little glow. Now I've got this glow under my lights. That can be a really fun way to play with these new selection tools. You can also use this color fill with the automatic selections, and this is really useful when you have a sketch or maybe like a coloring book. I'm going to grab my palette and bring it out here. Now with this new selection tool, I can just tap a color that I want to use and tap an area to fill that I want to use that coloring. Now I can't just switch to a new color, because it's going to change all the colors that I have just recently selected. So I need to keep it in the color I want it to be. Exit the selection tool, re-enter it, and then I can switch colors, and grab a new area where I'd like to color things. You can even use this to fill in solid lines, and this works also the same as the color drops. So there is a threshold, if you drag and pull it, it will feel more or less of the area. 4. Transformation Tool Updates: There's a bunch of new changes to the Transform tool. As usual, this green node, will rotate things. But what's new is if you tap on that green node, now you can actually write in an angle that you would like this to be rotated at. If I say 24, it will rotate to 24 percent. If I want it to rotate in the negative, I just tap on this little negative button and I'll rotate negative 24 degrees. This is also true if you tap on any of the blue bounding boxes; you can actually set the exact dimensions that you would like your object to be. This is going to be just the selection of the object that is inside of this bounding box. If I wanted to make this 2,000 pixels, which I can't imagine wanting to blow it up that much, but just as an example, I could do that. Also, this little blue chain, this what links these two dimensions together. If you want them to stay in ratio, you can do that. If you want that to not be in ratio and maybe say this is 100 pixels, then it's going to squash it up so you can keep that ratio on or off however you like. There's also now selection where you can adjust the bounding box. Rotating this orange node will allow you to change where the bounding boxes. So if I want the bounding box to be right here, then I can tap on here and I say, that's at negative 30 degrees. If I put it at zero, boom, it's going straight up and down. Whereas, if it's right here, if I tap on here, the bounding box says that this is rotated at a zero degree angle. Adjusting the bounding box can give you a better idea of what angle you're actually at. It also will give you maybe a better sense of the actual size of your object. Since grabbing it like this is probably a more accurate representation of how tall and wide it is rather than the bounding box being from this tip to that tip. You can use this Transform tool on multiple layers at the same time. Right now I've got this little cell phone on several layers, along with lots of other details, well, the shadows. All of these are on these four layers. I only want to transform this cell phone. I'm going to grab my selection tool and I'm going to make a selection around the cell phone. I'm going to go to my Transform tool. Now I'm only moving the cell phone and all its details even though it's on multiple layers. Now, if I wanted to expand the cell phone and stretch it out a little bit, make it a little bit wider, make it like a tablet, well, it looks really funky. This is where this bounding box can be really handy. Using this bounding box, if I grab the yellow and I move it so that it is more straight up and down. Now, when I stretch this, it looks a little bit more natural. This way, kind of distorted it. It's skewed it. Whereas, when the bounding box was straight up and down with this, now it transforms it in a more even way. Having magnetics on is going to help this bounding box snapped to where Procreate thinks is the best spot for it to be. If magnetics is off, this will just glide to wherever you want. There are also new snapping and magnetics tools. Snapping is something that will help you align objects to each other or to the canvas itself. For example, if I wanted to make a pattern out of these cat heads and I wanted to line them all up so that they are evenly put together, I can do that. Let's start with the top row here. If I take this cat and I move it around, you can see that it's creating these guidelines and snapping. It's forcing it to snap right to that space so that this ear is lined up with this ear and the bottom of this phase is lined with the whisker down here. I can do the same thing with this cat over here. You can see again, it is trying to align itself with those guys. I can just bring the rest of them up and line them up. Now, my cat heads are all in a nice even row. There are a couple of settings in the snapping which are distance and velocity. Here's what they do. Distance is how far away an object is before it will start to snap two things. When snapping is turned all the way up, It's going to snap to a lot more stuff. When it's turned all the way down, it's not going to try and snap to anything unless it is exactly lined up with it. You can see like, as I am like exactly lined up with its object here. Now, it's trying to create those guides, and the snapping power, it's not jumping nearly as much. This is something you have to feel as you're playing with it. I like to have that medium up. The velocity is how fast you're moving before it will try to snap. If you set the velocity all the way up, it's going to, unless you are really moving your cat really fast, it's going to snap to everything. But if you turn it down, it's not going to snap anything unless you're moving very, very slowly. In fact, if you turn it that low, I don't think it's going to snap at all. It will only snap if I'm moving very slowly. But if I move quickly now it's not snapping. Personally, I like to have my velocity further down and my distance further up, but play around and see what feels right to you. Now, you might have noticed that that was all aligning up and down and left and right. You can turn on "Magnetics" and Magnetics will help you move along at an angle. You can also use this to help align with angles. You can turn off "Snapping" or you can turn on "Snapping", you can turn off at "Magnetics" or you can turn it on all in this new snapping dialog box. Snapping doesn't only align objects with each other, it will also help you align things with the canvas itself. For example, I have everything flattened onto one layer here. If I move this entire layer, check out the bounding box. It is going to try and snap. See these yellow lines here, it's trying to snap it exactly as I move to the center of the canvas. Now, I've got a layer with my original art on there so I'm going to duplicate that again and move it to the other side. Again, you can see that it's snapping to exactly the center of the art and exactly the center of the canvas. These yellow lines are creating that guide. Now, I have this center here and if I wanted to, I could edit this so that I could make a seamless repeating pattern. If I wanted, I could come in here and redraw this so that this became one trunk and all of the leaves were coming from the top. 5. Canvas Widgets on iPad Home Screen: An update to iOS 14 is that there is a widget now that you can have a procreate and it will show you the most recent Canvas you had opened in procreate. If you tap on it, it will actually open up that specific Canvas in procreate. This is actually a really handy shortcut but also, I think it's just fun to have these images out here because it's just, hey, there's my latest and greatest piece of artwork. How do you set this up for yourself? You want to make sure that you are on your first screen of your iPad. If you're swiped over to the right, there is sometimes a couple of different screens. You want to be on the homepage. When you update to iOS 14, it will probably insert a couple of widgets here for you. If you just tap and hold on those until this little button right here says, "Edit home screen or remove widget", you want to edit home screen and then you can come in here and tap on this plus icon up here, and it will show you a couple of different suggested stacks, and in this case, you're going to choose procreate. This is the procreate data. So never mind that it should say procreate without this little b. You can say, "Hey, I want to add a tiny little widget like this. I want to add a long sideways widget, or I want to add the biggest widget possible." Which is what I've done right here. But I'm going to go ahead and add this one right here by tapping Add widget, and then, you can grab it until it pops up, and then you can drag it around and arrange your widgets however you would like them to be. 6. Adjustments Layers vs Brushes: Adjustment layers have gotten a big update. Previously, an adjustment would apply to an entire layer, but now you can choose whether you want it to apply to the entire layer, or if you want to paint on where you want that adjustment to happen. Say for example, I want to adjust the hue. Let's make this a little bit more saturate and little bit darker of this water, but I don't want the whole thing to get changed. I only want parts of it. Now I can come in here and paint that on. I can even choose what kind of brush I want to use so that there can be even like this fun texture, so check that out. I can even change these dynamically, so I can adjust the hue and saturation, and the brightness all at the same time. If you don't like what you drew, you can actually even use this smudge tool. I can come in here and smudge things up. Or I can even erase edges and say, actually, I don't want this part in here, but I do want this part, all smudged out. Another fun feature is if you tap on the screen, it will show you a little menu right here. If I tap and hold preview, it will remove what I've done so that I can compare it to what I had before and I can also undo or I can reset and remove all the changes that I did. I can also choose to apply or cancel the changes. 7. Chromatic Aberration, Glitch, and Bloom: There's some interesting new adjustments especially the Boom, Glitch, Halftone and Chromatic Aberration which I wanted to just briefly explain to you. So let's take a look at displace first. So there's perspective and there's displace. If I use displace and I drag around it's going to pull these colors apart, like if you've ever seen a newspaper that hasn't quite printed correctly and looks like these little layers are off. I thought it was gimmicky but actually I have to say that the more I played with this feature the more fun actually I think it is. Even this creates a fun little highlighted effect and you can even adjust the transparency of these or how blurred it is. So I think it's actually a fun little feature which I think that has a really nice soft glow that fits with the style of artwork that I even do. So that's how you use the displace. If I tap on this little menu, I'll bring this up and I'll reset it. Perspective is a little bit different. So to start this, you're going to slide across the screen to adjust it. Then this circle is going to impact where those lines go. The further away you are from the object that is on that layer, the more dramatic this effect is going to be and the closer that this circle is dragged to, the more subtle it will be. Just for reference, this layer is just the brown base color of the camel and this package up here. You can also play with the transition and the fall off. Fall off will lessen this impact. So as I drag this further over, you'll notice that my circle of reference is way over here and the effect is much less dramatic on the areas that are closer to it and it's still saying the same on the areas of my layer that are farther from that. So it's going to not let it be totally uniform across the whole thing. It's going to apply this [inaudible] shift differently on different parts of the layer. So let's take a look at the Glitch setting here. This works the same way. You slide to the left or the right to engage it. It creates this very trendy like dispersion effect. Wave is a little bit different. Wave creates this wavy section and glitch it out. This is a totally different one as well. So this separates it and puts it into these different boxes and cuts it up. With diverge you slide to bring it up. But you can actually control each of these colors. You can say the red I want it to go to the left or the right, the green, do I want it to go to the left or the right, the blue left or right and the zoom how strongly or finally you want to see that effect. So that one gives you a lot of control over everything. Halftone is going to be great for those of you who do comics. As you drag to the right, it creates these circles. You can do a full color circle, you can do a same white circle or you can do a plain black newspaper circle. The size of the circles will shift depending on how far you drag this blue bar up here. Bloom is a little bit different. It basically takes the brightest parts of your painting and make them even more intensely bright. In this case, I am working on this layer where the brightest point is actually the highlighting on the faucet handle here. When I use bloom and drag it all the way up, it really increases those bright spots. 8. Gradient Map: Another big new feature is the gradient map feature. I have everything here on one layer, and it's all black and white. If I tap "Gradient Map", and I'm going to tap "Layer", it will color your image. What this does is if I go to, let's try Venice. The value over on this corner will color everything in the darkest values, and the value over on the right-hand corner will cover everything in the lightest values. As you move in-between into the gray scales, these will assign those grayscales to this kind of color, and it will gradually shift from this color to this color, and this color to this color depending on the gray scale. If I turn this off, you can see, this is like the palest color right here, and that is in that peach tone. If I drag this peach further and further over, the more light colors, they're starting to absorb that peach color. I can drag that back. I can also come in here and make my own custom colors. I can say, "You know what? I actually don't want this to be blue in here, I want it to be green." Now all of those really mid tone dark gray colors are green now. You can use any of these preset ones, but you can also custom-make your own. This gradient map feature is something that I used to use in Photoshop, when I had real physical watercolor painted objects. That is something that you can do in Procreate as well. This is a real watercolor painting that I did, and I remove the background, and I just used the automatic selection tool to grab the white background to remove it. Now I can come in here and use the gradient map, only this time I'm going to use pencil. I want to use, let's try this blaze one. If I come on to the flowers, now I can really customize what colors are. Why wouldn't you use the hue and saturation for that? Well the hue and saturation is nice for shifting all of the colors, but the nice thing about gradient map is that I can say, well, first of all, if I turn the preview off, this is all shades of pink, and the gradient map, I can see I've got a blue and a pink color in here. So the gradient map gives me more control over exactly how I want to recolor things. Hue and saturation wouldn't be able to do that, they'd only be able to shift that single pink to a single blue or green, not add more colors in. Again, as I drag these further over, I can make these more or less pink as I go. 9. New Crop and Resize Settings: Another update is if you go to the Wrench icon, the Canvas tab, and the Crop and Resize, there are some new settings in here which are very exciting. If I tap on "Settings", I can now adjust the DPI, which is fantastic news. Always keep in mind that while you can add and you can make a higher DPI, it does not mean that your image will be crisper or better. For example, let's say that we are starting with a Canvas that is 72 DPI. You can see that the pixels are up around 800 and the inches are around 12 inches, but it's 72 DPI. If I zoom in here, you can see that it's very pixelated. This art is really small, the cupcakes are really pixelated. Well, if I go into the crop and Resize Tool and I go to settings and I say, "I'm going to make this 300 DPI. This is going to make this all better." Well, what happens is, now the Canvas is 300 DPI, but procreate can't just make things higher-quality. If I zoom in here, these are still pixelated. Procreate can't say like, "This is what you intended to, you intended make these jagged edges". It doesn't know if you meant to make this a jagged edge or if you meant to make it a smooth edge. It just blows the image up to the best of its ability, but it doesn't make it more high-quality. It can crunch things down smaller. If you want to adjust the DPI smaller, if you have a higher res version of the image and you crunch it down smaller, it can remove information, but it can't put in information that it doesn't know what information you want it to put in. It doesn't know what pixels you want to put in. This Crop and Resize tool is really useful as long as you don't expect it to do something that it just can't do. There's the Crop and Resize tool. 10. Quick Menu: The quick menu has also gotten an update. Quick menu is a really easy way to bring up a bunch of different shortcuts, without having to go into different menus. We're using different gestures to use these shortcuts. Like I can flip the canvas horizontally really quickly instead of going up into the wrench icon and into the canvas tab and then tapping into there. Quick menus are really easy way for me to jump in and just use that shortcut. If I tap and hold on one of these options, I can select all kinds of different shortcuts. What's new to the quick menu is if I tap on the center that says quick menu, I can actually add a new quick menu set. So if you have different shortcuts that you like to use when you are sketching versus if you are adding in your flat layers or your colored, or you're doing your shading or your final art, you can have different quick menus that you can switch between and use really quickly. So now when I exit this quick menu and I bring it back up, it's in quick menu two. 11. New Text Gestures: There's some cool new text features too. If I go to the wrench icon, "Add" and tap "Add text", it's going to add this new text. With the iOS 14 update, you can actually write things out. I can say, "happy birthday." Let's move that down here so you can see a little bit better. It will actually write happy birthday. You can also come in here and just scribble something out to remove it. Another cool feature is you can draw a line between things to create a space between them, or if you didn't mean for there to be a space between them, you can draw a line and it will remove a space. I can put them in there and remove them as needed. If I want to select something, I can circle it, and then it will bring up this little keyboard up here. If I tap on here, I can pull in the different fonts, play with the different sizes, all of that good stuff. If I draw a line through this, I can also select it. Another thing that I find really handy is that now that I am on my text layer, I can just tap onto the text and it's going to pull up the keyboard. In the past you had to tap on the layer that had your text, and then you had to hit "Edit Text". But now if you are on the text layer. I'm not on the text layer, so if I tap it, nothing happens. But if I'm on the text layer and I tap in here, then it's going to pull up my keyboard for me. So I find this to be really useful. 12. Your Project: Your project is to use one of the new adjustment tools to create a piece of artwork. You can use a piece of artwork that you already have that's already existing, or you can come up with something completely new. You can be very subtle with it. It doesn't have to be something crazy. Personally, I like chromatic aberrations the best. Grab one of your favorite pieces and add a filter to it. Upload your project in the My Projects tab. If you're on Instagram, come and say hello. You can find me @paperplaygrounds. If you'd like to share your work, you can use the #drawwithbrooke. I share student work in my stories and feed. 13. Final Notes: Thanks for joining in with me on this quick succinct explanation of the latest Procreate features. If you enjoyed this class, please do me a favor and give it an exceeds expectations review or let me know in the comments that you enjoyed it. It makes my day to hear from you and reviews really help the class out. If you'd like to learn more about Procreate, I've got a gestures cheat sheet, which you can find via the link in the project description tab below. I've also got a full class on Procreate. If any of the things that I did in this class didn't make sense, check out that intro to Procreate course first. I've also got classes on drawing and color theory.