Painting program for the iPad Procreate was updated Tuesday to version 1.7, considered a major upgrade that offers a new 4K Cinema canvas (up to 4096×4096 for the recent iPads, 4096×2616 for the iPad Mini and iPad 2), a new fullscreen interface, new blend modes, a redesigned layers interface, an improved Silica engine, more undos, improved brush settings, a new transform system and much more. The program offers an OpenGL-driven, 64-bit, multicore proprietary engine, shareable and importable custom brushes, and continuous auto-save.
The new version also features custom canvas size creation, file sharing and importing, export both to global social services as well as PSD files and other standard formats and a dozen new blend modes — including many familiar to Photoshop users like dodge and burn, luminosity, difference, hue & saturation and more. The new transform system adds distort, shear and non-uniform transformations. The app, made exclusively for the iPad, now offers multiple swatch panels, a new eyedropper tool, improved brush settings interface and pressure settings, along with a new artwork orientation gesture and three new Procreate Artery sets.
The program has also been updated to add support for the latest Pogo Connect and palm rejection. On a recent full-size iPad such as the third- or fourth-generation, up to 17 layers are supported at 4K sizes, and 28 layers and half-maximum (a maximum limit of 128 layers depends on canvas size and system resources). The iPad 2 and the iPad mini can support up to four layers at 4K sizes and 16 layers at half-max sizes. The new Silica 2.0 engine keeps 64-bit tools fluid and speedy, including a responsive smudge tool and 250 levels of undo and re-do.
Procreate comes with 48 built-in brushes, while a total of 72 other official brushes are available as in-app purchases. The app features app-wide Dropbox integration, a dual-texture system and many multi-touch gestures. The program sells for $5 with various additional brush sets available for $1 each. It requires iOS 6 or later.
