Procreate settings for artists

Here there are several Procreate settings for artists that make a big difference. What I would like is to make my drawing experience as similar as possible to the real media, but unfortunately the default settings in Procreate are not useful. The standard and default palm rejection is not good and the pressure sensitivity must be hacked, among other issues. See the useful tricks I’ve come across after a lot of experimentation:

1. Pressure curve

The adjustment of the default pressure curve helps to make the touch feeling more natural, compared to drawing on paper. This picture shows the curve I have set which gives the best results. Note the upper flat part of the curve, when drawing on paper you never make a lot of pressure, the highest level must be achieved before reaching the limits of the Apple pencil.

2. Procreate settings for artists under “Advanced gesture controls”

Go to the “Advanced gesture controls” and make the following adjustments:

In the Touch area, make sure to select “Gestures Only“, this is the best possible palm rejection, in fact the touch will not allow you to draw lines thus avoiding accidental marks when resting the palm on the tablet. This is an awesome setting and the best possible palm rejection.

in the Eyedropper area use the settings shown on the picture, and deselect “Touch hold” (in order to use Touch hold for the “Quick menu” activation).

In the Quick Menu area, deselect all settings and select only “Touch Hold”. This is magic, assign 0.9 seconds to activate the Quick menu when you are drawing.

3. Make extensive use of the Quick Menu

With the settings shown above the Quick Menu will show up touching the screen with one finger while drawing, just after 0.90s (shorter time will activate the quick menu when probably I just want to rest the hand on the screen).

Use all the time the “flip canvas horizontally”. When I am drawing details and proportions I use to flip the canvas at least once per minute. While painting with traditional media I do the same with a mirror (with graphite, oil painting, all media!), this is a very important trick. Why is this useful? when you are watching the image for minutes (hours) our head becomes used to the mistakes, in other words, with the time we lose the ability to detect errors in proportion and tone. The best way to avoid this is a simple but effective mirror image. This trick has been used by traditional painters for centuries.

4. Disable the “straight lines” feature

99%of the time I do not need to use this feature, but if activated, when resting the tip of the pen on the screen will draw accidentally a straight line. I use to leave my hand resting on the tablet surface, same as drawing on a real paper, so it is a must to disable this annoying feature.