Organize and Backup Your Procreate Files

1. Intro: Do you use Procreate to create artwork and have found yourself just like me getting lost amongst your files? I find myself scrolling and scrolling only to find that file that I'm looking for is hidden somewhere in the stack where it didn't belong. It's both very frustrating and time consuming to have unorganized files in Procreate. To make it easier to find my files and to make sure that my Procreate files are backed up in a secure way, I made a system to use that I will teach you in this class. Hi there. I'm Maja Faber, I'm a surface pattern designer and online teacher. I've been using Procreate for many years, but it wasn't until recently that I actually figured out a way to organize and backup my files. That works for me in the long run. This class is a short and very easy to follow class, which is all about how to organize and back up your files in Procreate. We will use Procreate when we organize our file and for backup, I will use my computer, the Cloud Service Dropbox, and an external SSD hard drive. You can use another Cloud service if you want to and choose yourself, if you want to use an external hard drive to or not. But I highly recommend that you use somewhere else than locally on your iPad to backup your Procreate files. If this all sounds a bit confusing right now, don't worry, because I will show you my whole system in this class step-by-step, which you can just copy straight off for me if you wish, or take the bits and pieces that suits you. If you feel ready to organize and back up your files in Procreate, let's start the class. 2. Your Project: Your project in this class is to organize your files in Procreate. Use the system that I showed you in class. When you have organized your files, you can simply take a screenshot of your Procreate home screen, and add as a project here in class. 3. All About Stacks and Files: Let's start this class with talking about the separate artwork and the stacks. Basically, the separate artwork are files and the stacks are folders. When you create a new file in Procreate or new canvas, it will be named untitled artwork. You can anytime you want, tap that name and rename it to anything you want. I highly recommend that you name your files as you go, or at least regularly because if you name your files in Procreate, it will be much easier to find them both in Procreate and later on when we back up our files on our cloud service or our external hard drive. My workflow is that usually I create a pattern for example and later on when I will use that pattern to something and export it, I rename it before I export the pattern in any way. When you have your files in Procreate, you can create stacks. There are two ways to create stacks. You can tap a file and drag it over another file and create a stack like that, or you can select different files and tap stack, which have created a stack over here. You can see how many artworks are included in the stack, below the name of the stack and the name you can also change by tapping the name stack and rename that stack to something that makes sense. How to name and organize your files and stacks. We will talk more about in the next lesson, but in this lesson, I just wanted to show you the very basics of fires and stacks and how it all works. When you have a stack, you can tap into that stack and this is the files that are included in that stack. Tap back into gallery and you can see that you have a preview image of the stack. The preview image is the file that is first in that stack. If you change the order of the files in the stack, you will get another thumbnail image. If you want to move out artwork from a stack, you tap into stack, tap and hold that artwork, you can tap stack, and here you are in your home screen again. If you hold over another stack, you will get into that stack. If you just want to release your file outside of any stack, make sure that you don't hold too long over another stack and then you let go. Even if you have only one artwork left in a stack, it will still be a stack. If you don't want this artwork to be inside of the stack anymore, you need to tap and drag to place it outside of that stack. That will remove the stack because there are no more files in the stack and place the file outside of the stack as a separate file. You can change the order of both your files, here in the home screen by tapping and dragging and let go and your stacks, which is really good when you want to organize our files, which we will go through in the next lesson. That was the very basics of files and stacks. Maybe you knew that already, but I just wanted to make sure that we went through all of the basics before we go through how to organize all of your files. 4. Organize Your Files: The next step to get organized in Procreate is to think through how you want to organize your files, so this depends on what type of artwork you create and how you typically work. I think it's good to have some system that works in the long run. You can, of course, change that system as you go. But it's good to have some system that works so that when you create something new, you know how to organize it. That way it will be much easier to find your files both in Procreate and also in your backup. There are, of course, many ways you can organize your files. For me, it makes sense to organize my files by project. I have a few different things that I create in my business, and that is patterns and art prints. I also create different graphics and things for my business and also for my Skillshare classes. I would say that for me to organize by project makes the most sense. For example, these are patterns that I create for my [inaudible], grow your style, in October 2022. Then I have patterns and art prints that I'm working on that aren't finished, that I organize in separate stacks. Every Skillshare class and artwork that I create for that, or fives that I create for that, I have in separate stacks. This is a stack that I haven't named yet that are my prints for society 6, so I will just tap into that stack and name it the society 6 art print. This is one way of organizing your files by projects. But another way to organize your files is, for example, by client. If you work with commissions or clients in any way, you can organize the files by the separate clients. You can also organize your files by month, for example. If you only create art prints and you create a bunch of art prints every month, you can organize your files by the month or the year. Think through how you want to organize your files and then create stacks that are based on that system. My files here are fairly organized because I already had my files organized and to make an example in this class, I unorganized my files a little bit. But what I would do here on my screen, is to remove these empty canvases. I will just tap, Select and select those and delete those because I know that there's nothing in those. There's nothing that I'm working on. It's just empty canvases. Then I will make sure that all of these separate files are within a stack. This is, for example, a pattern that I'm working on, so it will be in this stack. I tap the file and drag it into that stack. This acorn pattern is within my [inaudible], grow your style tier, so this is the stack for that. I will tap acorn pattern and drag it over that stack to open up the stack and then dropped acorn pattern within that stack. Next, let's see what we have. Here, I have some patterns that aren't in the right stacks. I will just tap and hold the pattern and tap out the stack and tap in within a new stack. Sometimes if your fingers slip like-minded here, you can just try again. Tap the file, drag over the stack, and drop your file within that stack. One thing worth to mention is that if you don't tap into the stack, but tap stack, once again, for example, your stack will be renamed to not the name that you named it too, but to stack again. I will just rename that stack again, and make sure that the name of the stack doesn't change. I tap the file, drag over this stack and hold until that stack opens up and then I drop the file. That way the stack won't change the name. Now, I think that this looks good. Here is something that I'm working on as well, so I will drag that into the patterns stack. Now we have gathered the files that are here within different stacks and all other stacks are named what I want them to be named, by the project or what I'm working on. This is the first step. Make sure that the artwork that you are finished with are named what they are supposed to be named. You can of course, change that later on if you need to. But it's good to know also when you export these files and backup these files, it's good to know the names so that you easily can find them later on. Then make sure that your stacks are named what you want them to be named. For me, that is by projects. That was the first step in organizing your files and stacks. In the next lesson, I will show you smart little tip on how to get even more organized. 5. Add a Preview Image: Here's a quick tip how to get really organized in Procreate in a quick and easy way. As you can see in Procreate, when you have files that you have sorted in stacks, you can only see the first artwork in that stack. You can see a hint of the two next artwork below the first one. But you still can't see really what's inside of that stack. You can tap select, tap the stack, and tap preview and that will show you the artwork within that stack but you won't see the small thumbnails. This is my trick how to see what's inside these stacks when you're on your home screen in Procreate, which will make it much easier to scroll through your artwork and find what's inside your stacks. My way of doing this is the following. When you have a stack, you tap into that stack and then you take a screenshot of what's inside of that stack. That screenshot will end up in your camera roll. The next step when you're inside of your stack is to tap photo over here. Tap the screenshot, which will add the screenshot as the first file in that stack. When you then tap out of that stack, you will get a preview of the first files that are within that stack, which will make it much easier for you to see what's inside of the stack and where the files are that you want to find. Let's do the same with the other stacks. I will tap into stack, create a screenshot, tap photo, and just add the preview like that. Then I will do the same with all of my stacks and that will make it much easier for me to see what's inside the stacks and it will make it so much easier to find my files in the future when I might have forgotten what I created within those stacks. This is a quick way of organizing your files with preview images in Procreate. 6. Backup Your Files: Now we have organized our files. As you can see, I have organized all of my files with stacks, and a preview image on all of these stacks that makes sense for me to have a preview image on. The next step is to back up your files. The organization is finished and it's time to backup our files. When I back up my files, I use the Cloud service Dropbox and an external hard drive. You can use any Cloud service that you want. But I highly recommend to not only store your files locally on your iPad or your computer. But to use a Cloud service, and or an external hard drive. For me, both makes sense so that if some trouble with one of the backups, the Dropbox or the external hard drive, I always have the other one. As I mentioned, for the Cloud service, I use Dropbox and I've just bought the new external hard drive, which works really good for me. There are many different ones. This class is of course not sponsored by this brand. But I just wanted to show you in case you are curious what I'm using. I have just bought this Samsung really small SSD hard drive. It's two terabytes, and it's called T7. For me, this works great. There are many other ones as well. But I just wanted to show you if you're curious of what I'm using. The first step to back up our files is to export our files. For me, it never works good to save it directly to my Cloud service. What I mean with that is, if I would, for example, select the whole Stack, share it as a JPEG for example. Then it needs to work for awhile to export the files, and prepare them for export. Then I share them to Dropbox. That is one way to save two Dropbox. But for me, this has never worked that well. I might have to do with my Wi-Fi. I have fiber and it should work perfectly fine. But I've found that it's always lagging and the files don't show up and some files disappear. This is not the way that I back up my files, even though you could if you really trust your Wi-Fi and everything works smoothly. But that is not how I do it. But what I do is that I tapped a Stack, tap Share, and then I export my files as both JPEG and Procreate. You can export your files as any file format as you wish, of course. But for me, the most important thing is that I have the original procreate files, which is why I export the Procreate format. Then to be able to see which files I have exported because you can't view a thumbnail of the Procreate files on your computer. That is why I also export a JPEG file, so that I easily can see a thumbnail of my files. First I export the Procreate files, for example. I tap the Stack, tap Share, and tap Procreate as a file formats. Then it usually takes a little while, especially if I have a lot of artwork in that stack. If I have too much artwork in a stack, for example, try to export. I think 792 artworks at once, it didn't really work. Then I needed to go in, and select a bunch of artwork. I think I selected two or 300 at once. Then I exported those and that worked fine for me. But it also might depend on your iPad and the storage on your iPad, and your Wi-Fi, and all of that so you can try it out. There's usually a stack with 30 or 100 artwork works fine for me to export at once. I can also export separate files if I would like to. But for me, it's good to have the same system in my backup as I have on my iPad. That way, it makes it really easy to find the files in the backup. I will show you how I organize that on my computer and Dropbox and in the external hard drive as well. But what I do is that I export the full stacks and then AirDrop them to my computer, stack by stack. Let's first forward this a little while until the files are prepared to be exported. When the files are ready to be exported, I tap AirDrop, and I AirDrop the files to my computer. The next step I will show you on my computer screen. What you do is that you AirDrop the files to your computer and then we will head over to the computer. Now we are on my computer and I have exported the files in a stack as both JPEG files and Procreate files. They end up in my downloads folder. I will select all of the files in my Downloads folder. Then I have a folder on my Dropbox that says Procreate. I sort my backup folder is in years. This is my backup folder for 2022. Then I tap into that Folder, and here I have folders that looks exactly like the stacks in Procreate. Now I will show you in a minute just how to do this. The first thing that I do now is to make a New folder in this backup folder. I will name this folder the same name as my stack in Procreate. This stack in Procreate were called Patterns Autumn, October 2022. When I've named that folder, it will disappear because I have sorted my folders by name, but I can always sort them by date added. That way it will end up at the top of this larger folder with the backups. Within this folder, I double tap to Open that one, and then I tap and drag in all of my Procreate files. In this folder, I will sort my files by name. That way, the JPEG file, and the Procreate file will end up next to each other. I can easily see that the file name, Cozy Cabin Blue is this JPEG file. It works as a preview of the Procreate file. That way, I know what artwork is included in which Procreate file. The next step is to take this folder, and I want to add the preview image to that folder, just as we did in Procreate. This is an option that you don't absolutely need to do. But for me, I think that it works really good to find my files when it looks exactly the same as it does in Procreate. To add this preview image, I will find it in the folder. Double-click the Image. Her, e I will tap Command C to Copy this file. Or you can tap Edit and Copy. Then I will head back to the folder and out of the folder. Right-click on the Folder and Get info. Over here, you see a little Folder symbols. I will select that and tap Command V to Paste the File. Shut this little Option window. There you can see that I have added a thumbnail image to my folder. Now here's a choice to how you want to sort this in your Backup folder. I sort my stacks by name. It won't be sorted exactly as it is in Procreate. Because in Procreate, I choose to sort my stacks depending on the project and most of the time, the projects that I work on at the moment are on top of my stack in Procreate. But as I've named all of the stacks, it will be really easy for me to sort them by name here in my Backup folder. That way, I can scroll down to the name of that folder and easily find the Procreate file that I'm looking for. That is how I back up my files from procreates to Stacks and to Folders. In a Backup folder in Dropbox. The next step is really easy, and that step is to open up my external hard drive and the same backup folder here as in my Dropbox. Now let's add the New folder. That one was named Autumn, I think. This is the Folder. I will copy this whole folder. Command C to Copy, and then go to my external hard drive and paste that folder. I can open up this folder on my external hard drive. As it only was about 30 files in here, it went pretty quickly. Now I have this folder both in my Dropbox and on my external hard drive. That is how you Backup your Files and Stacks from Procreate to Dropbox, and if you wish also to an external hard drive. 7. Thank You: That's all for this class. Thank you so much for watching. If you liked this class, you can hit the "Follow" button by my name to make sure that you don't miss out on my future classes. You can also tap my name to go to my profile page here on Skillshare, where you'll find all of my classes available to watch. If you're interested in learning more from me and in more interaction with me as a teacher including tutorials, coaching, and learn more about how to find and grow your signature design style, check out my patreon page at patreon.com/majafaber. If you have any questions at all about this class, please ask them on the discussions page here in class. Feel free to leave a review to let me know if you enjoyed this class. I would love to hear your thoughts. Make sure that you share your project here in class, and if you post it on Instagram, feel free to tag me with Maya_faber. Thanks again for watching.