Procreate Brush Studio: Grain

This is part 4 of our 11-part series covering Brush Studio. In this video, we'll be focusing on the grain settings. We have a lot to cover here, so let's make a start. For this example, let's create a new brush in this set with the plus button here. To help with this demonstration later, we're just going to add some size variation under the Apple Pencil settings. Now we've got that sorted, let's find the grain settings on the left. Here at the top, we have a nice sized preview of our selected grain. We can change or edit this selection with the Edit button just above the preview. From here, we can tap Import at the top, and then choose from the list where we'd like to select a new source image to use. For this, let's grab one of our photos. We have a folder here with a bunch of square photos that were taken with the iPad's camera. This one looks good. Back in the grain editor, we can use two fingers to rotate our source image in 90-degree turns, and we can invert the value of our image by tapping with two fingers. The only problem with using this particular image is that it's not yet tiled or repeatable, but we can fix this by using Auto-Repeat just here. When using Auto-Repeat, we can drag the source image around with one finger, we can adjust its scale with the slider here, and rotate the image with the slider here. With the Border Overlap slider, we can adjust how thick the overlap of these repeating tiles will be. And with the Mask Hardness slider here, we can set the amount of blurring that occurs when blending these tiles. At the bottom, we have a toggle for Mirror Overlap, which will mirror the edges of the tiles instead of blending them. And we have a toggle for Pyramid Blending, which will blend different layers of detail taken from the source image. And this works better on a grain that has varied and complex detail. Pyramid Blending does not work as well when using simple, bold patterns. Once we're happy with our new grain, we can hit Done in the corner. Now we have a grain source, we have two main branches of options to choose from. Moving and Texturized. Let's start with Texturized, which will lay down the grain inside the brush shape in a repeating, consistent way. The first option, Scale, will adjust the size of the grain within the stroke. And the next option, Depth, controls how visible it will be. Under this, we can choose the blend mode that will be used by the grain. And with the last two sliders here, we can adjust the grain's brightness and its contrast. At the bottom here is Grain Filtering, which are just different methods of anti-aliasing. And this will help soften hard edges within the grain. Now, moving on, let's look at Moving Grain. Let's bump up our Scale first so that we can see what's happening. The options under Moving will use the grain in a more unified way with the stroke. And our first option here, Movement, is a prime example of that. On the left side of the slider, the grain will be dragged through the stroke. And to the right, it will roll in a repeating fashion. Next is Scale. This behaves the same as it does within the Texturized settings, changing the size of the grain overall. Unlike the next setting, Zoom, which, when set to the left, it will scale the grain with the brush size. And when set to the right, we'll clamp the grain's scale, irrespective of the brush size. Next is Rotation. When we set this at more extreme values, it will push and smear the grain in relation to changes in stroke direction. Depth. As before, we'll decide how visible the grain will be. The next two settings, Depth Minimum and Depth Jitter, work hand-in-hand. While Depth Jitter will randomly alter the visibility of the grain at each individual stamp of the stroke, Depth Minimum will set the lowest point of contrast when adjusting the Depth Jitter. Next, Offset Jitter will offset the position of the grain with every unique stroke. Here, we can set the blend mode used by the grain. Below this, we can adjust the brightness and contrast of the grain. And this is a little bright. Better. And last on the list again, we have our filtering options. If we don't want to keep this new brush, we can hit Cancel here in the corner, or we can hit Done to keep our edits and leave Brush Studio.