Editing with Procreate

Procreate is a drawing app for iPad or iPhone that allows you to make professional drawings. You can also import images and it works great for editing pictures. You can work in layers, blend, draw with a range of brushes, smudge and erase. You can change contrast or the colors of your pictures and make selections.

What I personally like a lot is that it is very easy to draw on the pictures and add details. I use it on my iPad pro with an Apple Pencil. You can use your finger if you want but with the pencil more pressure means a thicker line. For a program with so many options it is surprisingly cheap (around 10 euros). Below are a number of pictures I edited with Procreate. I let my imagination do the work.

This was my first attempt after playing around with the program to get the hang of it. I usually start with the smudging tool (Calligraphy/Brush pen). And I always use the Luminance Brushes (Lightpen and Bokeh Lights). The picture was made with the Pentacon 50 mm 1.8. This lens already gives a painterly effect. The combination of creative lenses and Procreate work well.

The picture was made in March when there were only buds on this branch.
(Lens: Pentacon 50 mm 1.8).

A bit more editing and I warped the flower and the bokeh to get the desired shape.
(Lens: Lensbaby Sweet 35 with macro converters).

Then I figured out how to create lights in my image. For this effect I used the Luminance Lightpen Brush (yellow) and the Spraypaints Splatter Brush.
(Lens: Lensbaby Twist 60 optic with macro converters)

This came out rather well. The picture is of moss with water drops. The drops were smudged to make them look like flames. With the Luminance Glimmer Brush I added sparkles to the fire. The bokeh was added.
(Lens: Lensbaby Twist 60 with macro converters)

I make loads of pictures and don't throw away much (nothing...), so I have loads of images that could use a little imagination. Crane flies are not very pretty, but I have discovered that with extra wings and other details, they look like fairyland creatures.

Procreate makes a video of every step in the process. You can export these videos. It also shows all the things that were tried but erased.
(Lens: Lensbaby Twist 60 with macro converters)

A heavily (heavenly?) edited wood anemone.
(Lens: Lensbaby Sweet 50 with macro converters)

Kind of inspired by my allergy to tree pollen.
(Lens: Lensbaby Twist 60 with macro converters)

I love adding light to the images. With the Luminance Brushes this works very well on a darker image.
(Lens: Lensbaby Twist 60 with macro converters)

When I took this picture of a very ordinary bug, I immediately knew it would be fun to edit.
(Lens: Helios 44 with extension tube)

The large sporophytes of moss always spark my imagination. Often I see a group of people lost in the woods or at a party (lost too ;)). But this looked like a little lamp.
(Lens: Lensbaby Twist 60 with macro converters)

And finally a grasshopper, pretending to be superman.

As a child I loved to draw but it is so much easier if there is something to work with, like an image. I draw on the image, but you can also put an empty layer on top of it and trace the lines. Drawing on an iPad with the pencil is very satisfying. Of all the apps I have used so far, this one definitely stands out!

And I almost forgot the latest addition to the series of magic mushrooms!