William Gallagher
Version 4.3 of the iPad-only Procreate app adds the ability to stretch, warp, and manipulate text within illustrations, plus new layer features and speed improvements.
Illustration app Procreate for iPad has new tools that use Apple's Metal graphics processing engine to allow users to precisely control letterforms within illustrations. Previously, users either had to draw each letter themselves or scan in existing images that featured type.
Procreate 4.3 for iPad now allows you to type into the illustration and to import fonts. "Add gorgeous editable typography to your illustration," says makers Savage Interactive in their App Store release notes. "Refine spacing and alignment with precision sliders, and rasterize the results for total control over the finish."
"Need to create something with a distinctive typeface?" continues the release note. "Easy. Just drag-and-drop your favorite fonts into Procreate and find your perfect type."
Adding a text layer to an imported photograph in Procreate 4.3The new update also improves how you can work with layers. There are new layer blend modes, new options for viewing single layers at a time, and also a new export that lets you share layers as a GIF.
Procreate is a raster illustration app, a bitmap one, but the new typography layer begins as a vector which you can adjust and stretch and manipulate at will. Once you're done, the text is converted to a raster image, though.
The standard for this kind of work on the Mac has long been Adobe Illustrator and Adobe has tried to bring its text manipulation tools to the iPad. Rather than releasing one app to do everything, though, Adobe has offered various elements of Illustrator and Photoshop across 20 different iOS apps such as Adobe Illustrator Draw.
Adobe has committed to bringing the full Photoshop app to iPad and that will include certain typography features. Until it also brings Illustrator, however, Procreate 4.3 is now the best single app for illustration.
Procreate 4.3 for iPad costs $9.99 on the App Store. It requires iOS 12 or later.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
3 Comments
Missed this - fantastic!
"> Procreate is a vector illustration app." The sentence above from the review is not correct. I love ProCreate, and this latest update is fantastic. However, ProCreate is a fully raster illustration app, although having type, and a few basic "smart shape" features (QuickLine, auto-recognize polygons) makes up for the fact that it has no vector tools (lines, shapes). Similarly, although it has great selection and colour change tools, once an object (or type) is rasterized, it no longer can be edited like in a true vector program.
The comparison to Illustrator and calling it a vector illustration app makes me wonder if the author has used Procreate. It’s nothing like Illustrator and isn’t vector-based.