Procreate: The App That Redefined Digital Art on iPad

If you own an iPad and an Apple Pencil, you have almost certainly heard of Procreate. Developed by Savage Interactive, a small studio based in Hobart, Tasmania, Procreate has grown from a niche painting app into the single most popular digital art application on any mobile platform. It is the reason many artists buy an iPad in the first place, and it has fundamentally changed how millions of people think about digital creativity.

First released in 2011, Procreate was one of the earliest applications to take the iPad seriously as a creative tool. While competitors were porting desktop interfaces to touchscreens with awkward results, Savage Interactive built Procreate from the ground up for touch and stylus input. The result is an application that feels native to the device in a way that no competitor has fully replicated. In 2018, Procreate became the overall best-selling iPad app on the App Store—not just in the art category, but across all categories.

The Interface Philosophy

The most striking thing about Procreate is what is not there. The interface is radically minimal compared to desktop painting applications. There are no floating palettes, no nested menus, no toolbar ribbons consuming screen real estate. The canvas dominates the screen, and tools appear only when you need them.

This minimalism is not a limitation—it is a deliberate design philosophy. Savage Interactive's approach is that the interface should be invisible, allowing artists to focus entirely on their work. Controls are accessed through intuitive gestures: two-finger tap to undo, three-finger tap to redo, pinch to zoom and rotate, swipe to access layers. These gestures become muscle memory within hours, creating a painting experience that feels more like working with physical media than operating software.

The simplicity also dramatically lowers the barrier to entry. An artist who has never used digital tools can open Procreate, select a brush, and start painting within seconds. There is no configuration wizard, no workspace setup, no learning curve for navigating complex menus. This accessibility has made Procreate the entry point for millions of artists transitioning from traditional to digital media.

The Valkyrie Engine

Procreate runs on Valkyrie, a proprietary painting engine developed by Savage Interactive specifically for Apple's hardware. Valkyrie is optimized to take full advantage of the iPad's GPU and the Apple Pencil's pressure and tilt sensitivity, delivering painting performance at up to 120 frames per second with virtually zero latency between pen input and mark appearance on screen.

This responsiveness matters enormously for the painting experience. Even small amounts of input lag—imperceptible in other applications—create a subtle disconnect between hand movement and visual feedback that makes digital painting feel unnatural. Procreate's near-zero latency eliminates this disconnect, producing a drawing experience that approaches the immediacy of pencil on paper.

Valkyrie also handles large canvases efficiently. On current iPad Pro models, artists can work on canvases with dimensions exceeding 16,000 pixels while maintaining smooth brush performance. The engine manages memory intelligently, allowing for dozens of layers on high-resolution canvases without the crashes or slowdowns that plague less optimized applications.

The Brush System

Procreate's Brush Studio provides deep customization capabilities wrapped in an accessible interface. Every brush in the application can be modified across multiple parameters: shape, grain, dynamics, pencil behavior, wet mix, color dynamics, and rendering mode. Artists can create brushes that simulate virtually any traditional medium—graphite, charcoal, ink, watercolor, oil paint, pastels—or design entirely novel digital tools.

The application ships with over 400 handcrafted brushes organized into categories including sketching, inking, painting, airbrushing, textures, and abstract tools. The community has created thousands of additional brush sets, many available for free, that extend the application's capabilities into specialized areas like lettering, pattern design, and comic illustration.

Procreate also supports importing Photoshop brushes (.abr files), which means artists migrating from desktop workflows can bring their existing brush libraries with them. This compatibility significantly eases the transition for professionals who have invested years in building custom brush collections.

Animation Assist

Procreate includes Animation Assist, a streamlined animation workspace that allows artists to create frame-by-frame animations directly within the painting environment. The feature provides onion skinning (showing ghost images of previous and next frames for reference), adjustable frame rates, and the ability to loop or ping-pong playback.

While Animation Assist is not as full-featured as dedicated animation software, it is remarkably capable for creating short animations, GIFs, animated stickers, and rough animatics. The integration with Procreate's painting tools means that every brush, blend mode, and effect available for static artwork is also available for animation frames, giving animated work the same visual quality as still illustrations.

Time-Lapse Recording

One of Procreate's most distinctive features is its automatic time-lapse recording. From the moment you create a new canvas, Procreate silently records every stroke, undo, and transformation you make. At any point, you can export a high-speed video of your entire creative process, from blank canvas to finished artwork.

This feature has had an outsized impact on art culture. Time-lapse videos of Procreate artwork have become one of the most popular content formats on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The ability to share the creative process—not just the final result—has made art more accessible and engaging for audiences who might never visit a gallery or read an art tutorial. For professional artists, process videos serve as portfolio pieces, marketing content, and educational resources.

The Pricing Model

In an industry increasingly dominated by subscription pricing, Procreate stands out with a one-time purchase price of $12.99. There are no in-app purchases, no premium tiers, no feature unlocks, and no recurring fees. Every update is included for free. The full application, with all features and all brushes, is available for less than the cost of a single month of most competing software subscriptions.

This pricing model reflects Savage Interactive's philosophy that creative tools should be accessible to everyone. For students, hobbyists, and artists in developing economies, the one-time cost removes the financial barrier that subscription models impose. For professionals, the value proposition is extraordinary—a production-capable painting application for the price of a lunch.

Professional Adoption

Despite its accessibility and low price, Procreate has been widely adopted by professional artists, illustrators, and designers. Published children's book illustrators, editorial artists, concept designers, and fine artists use Procreate as their primary or secondary creative tool. The application's portability—an iPad and Apple Pencil fit in a bag and can be used anywhere—makes it particularly popular for sketching, ideation, and location work.

Professional workflows are supported by robust export options including PSD (with layers preserved), PDF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and Procreate's native format. The ability to export layered PSD files means that work started in Procreate can be seamlessly continued in Photoshop or other desktop applications, making it a natural part of multi-application production pipelines.

Who Should Use Procreate?

Illustrators working in editorial, children's books, comics, or character design will find Procreate's brush system and intuitive interface ideal for both sketching and finished work.

Concept artists benefit from the portability and speed of the iPad workflow. Procreate excels at rapid ideation, thumbnail sketching, and producing polished concepts on the go.

Beginners and students gain access to professional-grade tools at minimal cost, with an interface that does not overwhelm new users with complexity.

Social media artists and content creators leverage the time-lapse recording feature to produce engaging process videos that build audiences and showcase their work.

The Limitations

Procreate is iPad-only. There is no Windows, macOS, or Android version. Artists who do not own an iPad cannot use it, and those who prefer working on large desktop displays with keyboard shortcuts will find the tablet-only workflow limiting for extended sessions.

The application lacks vector tools, which means it is not suitable for logo design, typography, or other work that requires resolution-independent output. Text tools are basic compared to applications like Photoshop or Illustrator.

File management within Procreate can feel limited compared to desktop applications. The gallery view provides basic organization through stacks (folders), but artists with hundreds of files may find the system insufficient for complex project management.

The Bottom Line

Procreate is a masterpiece of software design that proves powerful tools do not require complex interfaces or expensive subscriptions. By focusing relentlessly on the painting experience and leveraging the unique capabilities of the iPad and Apple Pencil, Savage Interactive has created an application that is simultaneously the most accessible entry point for new digital artists and a genuinely capable production tool for professionals. At $12.99, it is the best value in digital art software.