Procreate gradient guide: smooth fills on iPad

To make a smooth Procreate gradient, paint two or three bands of colour on their own layer, then open Adjustments › Gaussian Blur and slide your finger across the screen until the edges melt into one blend. For more control, build the colour up with a large Soft Brush at low opacity. For colours you can change later, paint the blend in greys and recolour it with a Gradient Map. Procreate has no classic drag across gradient tool like a desktop editor, but these three methods cover everything from a sunset sky to a fill inside hand lettering.

The blur method: fastest and smoothest

This is the method most illustrators use for skies and backgrounds, because a heavy blur averages away every brush mark. It works best on a layer that holds nothing but the gradient.

1. 1

   Add a fresh layer

   Tap + in the Layers panel. Keeping the gradient alone on its layer means the blur can't smear anything else.

2. 2

   Block in bands

   Paint horizontal bands with a large hard brush, or drag colours from the colour disc onto the canvas with ColorDrop inside rough selections. Three to five bands in related colours give the richest result.

3. 3

   Blur hard

   Open Adjustments › Gaussian Blur, choose Layer, and slide right across the screen. Bands usually need a high percentage before the joins disappear.

4. 4

   Repeat if needed

   If faint steps remain, apply the blur a second time. Any colour that spreads too far can be pulled back with a large soft Eraser.

5. 5

   Add a whisper of grain

   Finish with Adjustments › Noise at a low setting so the blend feels like a surface and holds up when exported.

The airbrush method: most control

Choose Airbrushing › Soft Brush, push the size near its maximum and drop the opacity to around a quarter. Fill the layer with your darkest colour, then sweep lighter colours in from one edge in loose passes, letting each layer of spray build. Because nothing is blurred afterwards, you decide exactly where the light sits: a glow low in one corner, a pale band through the middle. It is slower than blurring and the best choice for the soft pools of light behind a subject.

Procreate gradient maps

Adjustments › Gradient Map recolours a layer by brightness: darks take the colour on the left of the bar, lights take the colour on the right. Procreate ships with a library of maps, and you can tap to create your own and add stops along the bar. Choose Layer to apply it everywhere or Pencil to brush it on where you want.

The useful trick is to paint your gradient in greys first, using the blur method, then apply a map. The blend stays perfectly smooth, and you can try a dozen colour schemes on the same layer by changing the map rather than repainting. The same idea works on photos for a duotone look; gradient maps explains the theory across apps.

Gradients inside shapes and lettering

To fill hand lettering or a shape with a gradient, put the gradient on a new layer directly above the lettering, tap that layer and choose Clipping Mask. The colour now shows only where the letters are, and you can still move or blur the gradient independently. The quicker option is Alpha Lock: swipe right with two fingers on the lettering layer, then paint the blend straight onto it with a soft brush. Alpha Lock is faster; a clipping mask keeps the lettering and the colour separate, which is safer when you might change your mind.

Which Procreate method to use

Banding, canvas size and export

Set the canvas to the size you will actually use before you paint, since enlarging a soft gradient later makes it look smeary. In the gallery, tap + and create a custom canvas in pixels. A phone wallpaper or story is 1080×1920; an A4 print at 300 dpi is 2480×3508, which is covered in A4 size in pixels.

Dark, subtle blends are the ones that show steps. A light Noise adjustment breaks them up, and exporting PNG rather than a compressed JPEG keeps them from coming back. Gradient banding explains why it happens, and grainy gradients shows how much grain is enough.

If your painted gradient is going to become a run of social graphics, the resizing is where the time goes. In Gradiently the background is a Mark that renders natively at every size, so the story, the post and the banner all come from one design with the words kept readable. One look, every size shows how that works.