Top 5 Procreate Hacks That Will Blow Your Mind!!! -- Ghost Paper

Hello everyone and welcome back to Ghost Paper. You know what time it is. Today it's time for another mini video tutorial here on Procreate. And for this video guys, you definitely don't want to miss this one. This one I'm going to teach you my top five advanced tips for Procreate, and that is for advanced users, users who would just want to turn on the pro mode here on Procreate. This is a video that is not to be missed and also a video that you definitely want to watch until the end. But also just before I get into these tips, if you're new here to this channel and if you want to learn a little bit more about digital illustration or even how to improve your skills as a digital illustrator, make sure to hit the subscribe button down below and also turn on the bell notification icon so you don't miss anything. Now without any further ado, let's get to it. All right, so tip number one is using and activating the quick menu. The quick menu is something that I use quite a bit and I've also customized my quick menu for my personal use. So what do I mean by that? What I mean is that here on the left side, I've actually customized these buttons. In fact, I've customized all six buttons and here are my painting and erase. So whenever I want to just go paint here, erase right here, and it just becomes very, very fast. As you can see, I can keep painting and erasing just by using the quick menu and I don't have to drag my hand all the way here to the right or even by mistake leave anything behind on the illustration such as a glitch. So I can also create new layers. I can also merge down my top layer and I can also flip the whole illustration horizontally and that is just a design trick that a lot of designers actually do in order to check the balance of your picture because your brain does get used to seeing the picture that you're making a certain way and now by flipping, you'll be able to know like in fact here, I can honestly say that there is more actually elements hanging on this side of the frame. So if I wanted to make a balanced composition, I could have done here. I just added another plant or so just so I could like balance the composition. But this is a finished drawing and I'm just showing this, the power of actually flipping the images. But now first, how do we activate this option of quick menu and then furthermore, how do we customize these buttons? So the way to do that, we click here on the tools menu and then we're going to go into preferences and then we go into gesture controls. Here in gesture controls, we're going to click on quick menu and here you're going to choose your preferred way of activating this option. In my opinion, my preferred way here is the touch and hold and I've decreased the time to access that feature to something around 0.15 of a second. So it's really, really fast and that's exactly how I want it to be because then it allows me to be really, really fast. And I also have here as my last option, I have the eyedropper, which is something that I forgot to show you. So I pretty much have merge layers, creating new layers, paint and erase and my eyedropper. So I have a lot of options here to actually continue my production as fast as I can. So now how do I actually customize these options? So for example, let's just say that we want to change the new layer here button to something else. All we have to do is just hold onto that button and then you have here the whole list of possible actions that you may want to replace. So you just select that action and that will replace that button. The next one is something that I call the quick shape undo hack. As you know, you can draw some really loose and abstract lines here on Procreate and also shapes. What you probably also know is that you can draw something that resembles a line as much as possible, but keep holding the tip of the pen onto the canvas and Procreate will transform that shape or stroke that you just made into a quick shape. And you can also hold one finger onto the canvas as well and you get 15 degrees increments. And you probably also know that you have the edit shape capability, which allows you to, with two beziers here in the case here of a line, you can further edit this line. But the one thing that you probably don't know is that once you exit this box, there's no way to actually continuously tweak this line. It's not a vector line anymore and then it becomes pixel art or pixels. So what if I tell you there is a way to create a hack that allows you to do an undo action, which allows you to actually continue to edit the last quick shape that you create here on Procreate. In fact, that is, and I'm just going to show you, if I click here on this little square that I have here between the brush size and the brush opacity, I still have this option here that pops back up the edit shape and now I can continuously edit my last created shape or line. So what I'm trying to say is that if I now create a new shape here, a new quick shape, and I'm just going to make it into a circle, I can edit the Bezier curves and I'm just going to leave it as a circle. But now that I've exit the just left, the menu that I had here at the top, I'm going to click on the little square and when I click edit shape, I am only able to edit again the last created shape here on my canvas. Still, this is a really powerful thing and it's really helpful to have one more chance to actually edit your shapes before you're fully committed to whatever you're trying to make. So how do we actually activate this option? Well, we have to once again go here into tools and we're going to go into gesture controls and now we're going to head into the quick shape sub menu. Here on the quick shape sub menu, I have in my case here, I have the tab, the square, the little square, which is that button that I just showed you between brush size and brush opacity, and that will make a shape from your last stroke. So let me just show you what happens if I don't have that option selected. Now, if I just create a shape and actually has to be a quick shape, sorry, so I'm just going to hold the pen, it doesn't matter. I can just click here, edit shape. I'm going to edit this a little bit and now that I've clicked away, there is really no way to invoke that option. So I will have to do another quick shape, which doesn't make sense because I want to edit my previous one. So once again, really, really powerful tool. I actually always have that on. So I'm just going to go back into gesture controls, quick shape. And in my opinion, I've activated with the tab, the little square. There are other options, such as touch, the three finger swipe, but also in this video, I'm going to show you the list that I have for my gesture controls. And you will see why I have, for this case, I have the tap the square and for other ones, such as copy and cut and copy, I do have the three finger swipe. And then for touch, I have something else as well. The next one here is something that also happens quite a bit, which is taking a look at this illustration. If you are an organized illustrator, such as myself, or at least somewhat organized, you probably have your illustration broken down into layers. And as you also have the illustration broken down into layers, sometimes you want to edit something really small. Let's just say like the shadows here on this plant, or you want to make a tweak to the pattern that we see here on this vase. But it is a little bit, you have to find these layers and sometimes a graphic as small as this, Procreate creates this like little, little thumbnail with whatever is the summary of the layer. And sometimes that little thumbnail is so small that you don't really have a chance to actually see it as clearly as possible, such as, for example, the lenses on the glass or the skin on the character and other elements that I have here broken down into layers. But what if I tell you that there is a way to actually find and get into layers without even having to touch the layer control panel? In fact, there is. So we're going to go here once again into tools, we're going to get into gesture controls, but this time we're going to go into layer select. Now, what I do want to show you is that I will use for this option, I'm going to use touch for a finger touch will invoke layer select. Now, if I keep that option checked on and I just scrub the illustration with one finger, I'm now able to stop whenever I want and it will tell me what's actually contained in the region that I'm actually scrubbing. So for example, right here, I have the reflection on the glasses, I have the skin of the character, everything's kind of like around this region. And let's just say I do want to make a change to the skin of the character layer. I'm just going to click layer 22. And in fact, now when I paint this, I'm just going to paint this with blue, and I go into my layers panel, I am in fact on layer 22. And I actually, so in a nutshell, I've selected the layer that I wanted with my, just like scrubbing through the canvas. And then I've actually made edits to that layer. And I haven't even opened the layer control panel right here. So I do have to say I use this option sometimes because in fact, the more gesture controls you have activated, the bigger the chance you actually may turn something on by mistake, or you're actually selecting a layer you don't actually want. So I still use this option, but I actually do use this option once I'm towards the end of my illustrations. Once I have a very good sense of the number of layers that I'm working with, and I want to make changes, and I don't really want to keep going here on the layer control. But in fact, if you do have a lot of layers, this option might be really, really helpful for you. The next one is something really simple, but in fact, is a bit of a pain for a lot of us who actually use Procreate. And that is once we have the selected, when you click here on the arrow and you select the contents of the layer, whatever layer that you have. In this case, we're still here on the skin layer of our illustration. And let's just say that you want to zoom in into your illustration. You want to get closer, you want to do something. Maybe you're actually in the process of scaling this layer, you're transforming, but you do want to just get closer and see if your scale is hitting the right parts. The problem is that once you do pinch, Procreate understands that as a scale, but we can get around that by actually using a multi-touch feature. So I'm just going to rest my pencil here for just a second. With one hand, I'm going to hold the arrow, which is the selection arrow. And with my other hand, I'm just going to zoom in into whatever area I want. I can pan, I can do whatever I want. And I'm just going to leave the selection box here so you can see that it's actually working. And now that I released the arrow, I can keep making edits. So I'm just going to scale this a little bit. And again, I can hold the arrow again. I can go into this image, I can pan around and I can check for anything or any areas that I still want to tweak. So once again, it's something that a lot of people don't know that by using this multi-touch feature, you can zoom in and out with the selection box activated. And now for the last tip of this video, follow me as I'm going to show you what is my gesture controls list. So you can pause this video at any time that you want. You can just see all of the screens and you can check or uncheck options on your side on your iPad. But make sure to test all of these options just so you can see if that workflow actually works for you as well. So we're going to head into tools. We're going to gesture controls and let's actually start from the eyedropper. For the eyedropper here, I actually have it activated with the little square plus a touch and that will invoke the eyedropper. I don't really mind this option here too much because as I've just showed you, I also have the eyedropper on my quick menu. So in fact, the reason that I have this is that I have a secondary or a Moving on to quick shape. Once again, tapping the little square will invoke the quick shape option to have the undo hack and also my draw and hold timer or the time that it takes for Procreate to change my abstract line or shape into a quick shape. In my case here is about a third of a second, 0.34. So it's somewhere around a third of a second. So in fact, if you have your delay number here a little higher, say like a second, a second and a half, and you are indeed, you are actually using quick shape quite a bit, I would advise you to actually lower the number so you can be more productive. Next one is quick menu. And for that, as I've showed you at the beginning of the video, I have a touch and hold for this one. And as I've also showed you, I have a very, very small timeframe for that to be activated 0.15 of a second. The next one is full screen. And that is something that I see a lot of people who actually also make videos here on YouTube having that option on and is with the four finger tap onto the canvas. Then finally, clear layer is something that it is useful from time to time. It's not as easy to activate and you do have to practice a little bit. And for that, I do have the scrub activated, which basically you just need to scrub back and forth with three fingers to clear the layer on the canvas. However, you do have to be a little bit fast, in my opinion, with the motion so that you don't actually activate the copy and paste, which is our next one. For that one, I do have the three finger swipe, which is just a vertical swipe of three fingers will invoke the options of copying, cutting, whatever is the contents of your layer. And finally, one of the options that I've showed you here on this video as well is the layer select with the finger scrub on your canvas. I also made a video just for this tip, but I do believe that sometimes these videos, they are not as big as other ones, such as the how to fill layers quickly, which is a video that's actually performing really well on this channel. So I do find this layer finder really, really helpful. And a lot of people don't know about this one. So once again, here it is, is with the first option, the touch. So I believe that about covers all of these features and tips and tricks that I have my top five list for advanced things that you can do here on Procreate to speed up your productivity. If this video was helpful for you in any way, shape or form, if even one tip was actually helpful for you, please make sure to drop a like to this video. I'd be really, really happy and thankful if you leave a like, leave a comment if you have any other tips that you may find or you have discovered that weren't covered here in this video and you think it could be helpful for the community. And also please subscribe to the channel if you're new for more videos on tutorials and speedpaint videos that I also publish on Saturday mornings. So thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you guys on the next one. Ciao.