Artists and creatives are usually spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing the ideal painting and drawing app for their trade.
Apart from the age-old Photoshop, two other names often stand out – Procreate and Sketchbook.
Both Procreate and Sketchbook are powerful digital painting apps available for iOS and iPad, and PC respectively.
They are awesome programs for creating artwork, and they come with outstanding features that artists and graphic designers love.
Whether you need to create a descriptive illustration from scratch or design an immersive animation for your next anime series, you can always rely on either of these two apps to deliver the right results for you to perfection.
What’s Procreate all about?
Procreate is an intuitive digital illustration app that made an entry in the creative space back in 2011.
From expressive sketches to rich paintings and animations, the app offers a myriad of digital tools that you can use to create high-resolution artwork on the go.
It comes with an entire library of over 200 handcrafted brushes, ranging from pencils to inks to charcoal for the ultimate drawing, painting, or sketching experience.
The brushes available at the art studio are highly customizable to fit any style of art. Besides, you have complete control over the colors that you want at the touch of the canvas.
With all these features at your disposal, there is no reason why you should not try out the Procreate app for your next artwork. It can also be used for pixel art.
What’s Sketchbook all about?
Sketchbook is another popular digital sketching and drawing app that’s giving other similar apps a run for their money.
As the name implies, Sketchbook allows artists and creative professionals to capture their design ideas quickly on a digital paper before they lose their trail of thoughts.
The app essentially allows you to conceptualize your ideas in sketches before realizing the final artwork.
One main selling point about Sketchbook is that it has a simple, stripped-down interface for fast, distraction-free drawing, and it offers dozens of powerful sketching tools that you can use to transform your idea into a fine piece of art.
Interestingly, the app has a way of providing users with that remarkable and gratifying feeling of drawing on a traditional sketchbook.
If you wish to capture your design ideas quickly, then you’ll never go wrong with Sketchbook.
So, between Procreate and Sketchbook, which is better?
Well, there can only be one winner, and here’s how they stack up against each other …
Consider checking 7 Online Courses for Concept Art
Ease of Use
Procreate is an extremely powerful app with dozens of advanced features that you can use to create drawings, illustrations, paintings, edit photos, and visual art seamlessly.
However, it takes a bit of time to learn the basics and get a grip on everything. The long learning curve can be somewhat frustrating to beginners. But once you get a hold of things, Procreate can be a very easy app to use.
Check this for more about where to start.
The app provides various tools that you can use to explore your creativity and work at your own pace.
It allows you to use hand gestures to create art, zoom in or out of your artwork, and undo changes. You can also organize your artwork in a simple and familiar gallery for easy access.
Unlike Procreate, Sketchbook is incredibly easy to use thanks to its stripped-down user interface, familiar tools, and customizable brushes. This makes the Sketchbook app ideal for beginners and professionals alike.
The app allows you to sketch your idea on paper and transfer it to your digital device in a snap.
With Sketchbook, you do not have to be a pro artist. The app provides you with ellipse guides and traditional rulers, and it even corrects shapes automatically so you can draw and fix your images quickly and easily.
Verdict
No doubt, Sketchbook carries the day hands down in terms of ease of use. It has a user-friendly interface and easy-to-use tools.
Its incognito, stripped-down interface ensures that you can sketch or draw without any distractions.
Creative Tools and Features
Procreate has one of the largest collections of creative tools when compared with other drawing applications.
The app is essentially a fully-fledged art studio packed with hundreds of intuitive creative tools and features.
From brushes, pencils, charcoals, to inks, Procreate has everything an artist needs to take their creativity to the next level.
You can use these tools to paint, smudge and erase, to create distinct effects on any artwork.
The app also allows you to customize your brushes, combine existing brushes, and even import Photoshop brushes to your Procreate brush library. Besides, you can download thousands of brushes online to fit your preferred style.
Procreate offers a handful of color balancing tools to give you complete color control. With these tools, you can sketch, draw, or paint with any color you can ever imagine.
Other tools available in Procreate include selection tools, filtering, perspective, motion, streamlining, and editing tools.
Sketchbook is not as loaded as Procreate in terms of creative tools and features.
However, the platform equally has its fair share of useful tools that you can use to sketch and draw your pieces of art.
Sketchbook has made everything simple by providing more familiar tools to users. From pencils and markers to inks and brushes, the platform has everything you need to transform your sketch into a fine piece of art.
It also has over 190 brushes that you can customize to fit your style of art.
Some of the most popular and commonly used tools on Sketchbook include fill, symmetry, text, guide, distort, perspective, stroke, drawing, and cropping tools. The color library is an excellent addition designed for fervent illustrators.
Verdict
Procreate is miles ahead as far as creative tools and features are concerned. However, this doesn’t mean that Sketchbook is not worth your time.
While Procreate offers advanced tools and features, Sketchbook focuses on providing the basic tools that you need to capture your ideas and transform your sketch into the piece of art you desire.
Image Editing
Both Procreate and Sketchbook allow you to import images from your device onto the platform for editing.
They also provide various tools that you can use to transform and edit your image the way you want.
Whether you want to stretch, move, scale, or flip an image, both platforms provide the right tools to get the job done.
One aspect that gives Procreate an upper hand over Sketchbook is the ability to use multi-touch gestures to undo, and edit images.
For instance, a quick pinch on the image will resize it to fit your screen. A two-finger tap is used to undo while a three-finger tap redos previous actions.
A three-finger scrub comes in handy when you want to clear the entire image from the drawing canvas.
Verdict
The Procreate app is a clear winner as far as image editing is concerned thanks to the multi-touch gestures.
Sketchbook is somewhat limited as it only provides basic tools for editing.
Compatibility
Before selecting any drawing or painting app, you have to check its compatibility with all your devices.
If you are looking for an app that is versatile and compatible with all devices, then Procreate is not the ideal app for you.
This is because it is an iPad-only app. The main benefit of an iPad-only app is that you can work on your art on the go. You can also access your artwork quickly and easily wherever you are.
Check this workaround to see how to use Procreate on Window.
While there are many benefits of using mobile-only apps, it is always a good idea to use an app that works across all platforms and operating systems.
Sketchbook is the ultimate choice in terms of compatibility since it works across all devices, ranging from desktops to iPads to Android.
Verdict
You can do so much more as an artist if you are drawing, painting, or sketching on a desktop rather than a mobile device. A PC gives you a clearer view of what you are working on.
Besides, desktop applications seem to have more tools and features, which might not be readily available on mobile versions. For these reasons, Sketchbook takes the accolades for this.
Read: Can Procreate Run on iPad Air & MacBook?
Pricing
Procreate has no free trial and you have to pay USD 9.99 to get exclusive access to the app. This means you cannot try out the app before deciding whether you like it or not.
Read how to share Procreate with the family.
Conversely, Sketchbook is 100 percent free for everyone. You do not have to pay a dime for anything. This makes it the ideal app for art enthusiasts who want to explore their skills and creativity without having to part with their hard-earned cash.
Verdict
We all love free things and for this reason, Sketchbook is the outright winner as far as pricing plans are concerned.
Final Verdict
Choosing between Procreate and Sketchbook is not easy since each application has its unique upsides and downsides. Besides, both apps focus on different genres of art.
If you want to create detailed pieces of art with full color, texture, and effects, then you should opt for Procreate.
But if you want to quickly capture your ideas on a piece of paper and transform them into a final piece of art, then Sketchbook is the ideal choice.
Comparing the two, Procreate is the better option given that it offers you adequate tools to sketch, draw, paint, and create illustrations.
The only concern is that it takes a bit of time to learn how to use these tools.
Sketchbook, on the other hand, is simple and easy to use, but it does not have the advanced features required to create epic pieces of art.
This post is part of our hero content series on “The Ultimate Procreate Guide: The Number 1 Creativity Tool“.
