Painting the whole book in Procreate?

[Melissa_Bailey]

@Annaaronson no worries! It's super easy to get the two files types confused.

[Melissa_Bailey]

@xin-li you're so welcome! Looks like you're getting great tips on this thread. Since you already use Procreate for your personal work, it might be worth it to illustrate a trial spread to see if it will work out for your workflow.

Not sure if this is helpful for you at all, but here is a spread that I illustrated entirely in Procreate, start to finish. It's sized for a 9" square book -- the canvas dimensions were 18.25" x 9.25" (5475 px x 2775 px) at 300 dpi. It had a maximum layer count of 33 and I used 15 layers. The color profile was set at GRACoL 2006 Coated1v2, but as I said before, now I work in sRGB and convert the finished illustration to CMYK in Photoshop. The total file size is 422 MB (if I remember to turn off the time-lapse recording, the file size goes way down). I work on an iPad Pro 12.9 inch (3rd generation, 2018) with a capacity of 256 GB.

(This is a low-resolution image of the finished illustration.)

[xin li]

Thank you @Annaaronson, @Nyrryl-Cadiz and @Jeremy-Ross for sharing your tips and experience.
@Melissa-Bailey-0 Thank you so much for such a detailed info. I just checked my iPad, it is a 12,9 inch 2rd generation. also 256 capacity.

I also checked a personal piece I did on iPad which is 6430px x 4804px (Maximum layer is only 13) - haha... I did not know why I made such a big paitning! I kept merging layers to be able to make new ones. It is not a big issue when working with personal stuff, but might be more tricky with client based stuff. The good thing is that my iPad did not keep crashing, so it is technically possible to make large spread on my old iPad. The challenge is too few layers.

I will think a bit, and take a close look of my sketches, and to see if 13 layers (with some backups before merging stuff) would do for me.

Thank you again everyone, for helping out

[danielerossi]

@Annaaronson said in Painting the whole book in Procreate?:

Hi!

I did just finish a book in Procreate. It always ends up a little dark.. the color is definitely something you'll want to adjust in photoshop, but its not crazy different if you do it in CMYK.

Not sure if this is related but in one of the earlier episodes of the Three Point Perspective podcast, Lee mentioned that print shops always end up printing too dark so once you’re ready for printing, increase your artwork’s lightness by 10%.

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@xin-li yes! As someone who uses a lot of layers, that also bothered me a lot.

[charlottesart]

@Melissa-Bailey-0 I love how organic this looks! Thanks for sharing.

Just curious if you think that the 11 inch pro would be sufficient space for illustrating? I like that they are lighter to hold for a long time, but not sure if I'd miss the extra space. I normally sketch in an A4 size sketch book.

[Melissa_Bailey]

@charlottesart thank you!

To answer your question regarding iPad pro size -- you'll be the best judge of that. What I can say is that I have a 10 inch iPad (for personal use) and an iPad pro for business use, both of which have Procreate loaded on them. I draw on my iPad pro every day. It's been months since I've drawn on the iPad. While I do notice the slight parallax, what makes the biggest difference for me is the size. It's more comfortable for me to draw on a bigger tablet. In fact, I wish the 12.9" iPad pro was bigger! But that's just what's comfortable for me. Other artists prefer smaller tablets. It's all personal preference and what's most comfortable for you.

[charlottesart]

@Melissa-Bailey-0 Thanks for your opinion I've just been sketching in my book today and it's pretty similar to the 12.9". I think I'd be most comfortable with this size. Cheers!

[Dan Tavis]

I've done 4 books so far (1 being half procreate half traditional watercolor) like @Melissa-Bailey-0 I use sRGB (sRGB IEC61966 to be more specific) and then convert it to CMYK in Photoshop if the publisher requests.

I use an Ipad Pro 2nd Generation 512gb, which has been fantastic. The low layer count and pixelation when resizing lines in Procreate can be incredibly frustrating/challenging but after doing a couple books you'll eventually be able to adjust your illustration workflow to better suit those 2 flaws. Also, as more Ipad generations release Procreate is able to offer more and more layers + features to where eventually layers and I believe the pixelation issue will be resolved.

[xin li]

@Dan-Tavis thank you so much for your thoughts and tips.
As for now, it looks like I will do all my rough sketches, value studies, maybe even laying down the basic color in Procreate, but I decide to move the final painting process in Photoshop, mainly due to the lack of layer issue. I might invest in a new iPad next year to paint the entire book in iPad.

It is so incredible exciting to hear from all of you doing the entire book in iPad. thanks again, everyone.

[jdubz]

@xin-li I saw that the new version of procreate coming out dramatically increases the number of layers you can use (just getting better at resource management I suppose). Not sure which iPad you are using, but the video I saw showed that the 2018 iPad Pro went from like 100 layers to 190 layers for an 8.5x11, so it seemed like a pretty big jump.

[Varda Livney]

I did an entire book in Procreate, and also, after trial and error, did sRGB, and went to Photoshop to change to CMYK. Let's hope the folks at Procreate will improve their CMYK someday. My other big issue was that when I exported Procreate illustrations to Photoshop to edit, there were a lot of messy imperfections in the illustrations that didn't show in Procreate, so I ended up having to fix a lot. Anyone else find this? It's so fun to do art on my lap that I will try again with the next book, but still.... (I'm on a 10.5 inch ipad pro)

[joosterwijk]

@Melissa-Bailey-0 said in Painting the whole book in Procreate?:

The one thing that I keep in mind if I'm illustrating entirely in Procreate is not to resize anything in Procreate that will be in the final illustration. This is because when you resize bigger or smaller, or if you rotate an image, the lines pixelate.

This is indeed very annoying, but it really helps to have your scale settings on bicubic (the circle button right of ‘fit to canvas’). It makes a huge difference. But still there is some loss.