To add letters in Procreate, tap the wrench icon to open Actions, choose Add, then tap Add Text. A text box appears with the placeholder word "Text" already highlighted, so you can type over it with the keyboard or Apple Pencil Scribble. Double-tap the text to open the Text Entry Companion, where you can change the font, alignment, and styling. If you want hand-drawn letters instead, draw them on a regular layer, using a typed layer as a tracing guide if you like.

Add Typed Letters With the Text Tool

Procreate's text tool is vector-based until you rasterize it, which means you can retype, restyle, and scale it without quality loss.

1. Open your canvas and tap the wrench icon (Actions).
2. Tap Add, then Add Text.
3. A bounding box appears with the word "Text" selected, using your current color and Procreate's default font, Helvetica Neue.
4. Type to replace the placeholder with your own letters. The box expands to fit what you type.
5. Tap outside the box or tap the Selection tool to deselect and see the result on the canvas.

If you'd rather write than type, Apple Pencil Scribble converts handwriting into editable text. You can also paste copied text: double-tap the box to open the Text Entry Companion and choose Paste. That's useful for longer copy, such as a lower-third script or a title card you've already written elsewhere.

Move and resize the text box

Drag the bounding box to reposition your text. While it stays in vector mode, text can sit partly off the canvas without being clipped. To change the container, drag the blue nodes on either side of the box. Resizing the box does not scale the letters. It only changes where lines wrap, so a narrower box will break your text onto multiple lines.

To scale the letters themselves, change the font size in the Edit Style Panel, or use the Transform tool for a uniform scale.

Change Font, Style, and Design

Double-tap your text to open the Text Entry Companion. The current font name appears in the top left. Tap it to open the Edit Style Panel, where most of the typographic control lives. You can also reach the panel through "Edit Style" or the "Aa" button at the top right of the keyboard.

A few things to know:

• Selections matter. Style changes apply only to the characters you've highlighted. This lets you mix fonts or weights within one text box.
• Cursor state matters. If a blinking cursor is active, some panel options can be unresponsive. Deselect, tap the text box again, and reopen the panel.
• Fonts have styles. Where a typeface offers them, you'll see options like regular, italic, bold, and bold italic in the Style section.
• Import your own fonts. The Edit Style Panel has an Import Font option that accepts TTC, TTF, and OTF files. For motion work, this is how you match a brand typeface to an existing project.
• Scribble a font name. You can write a font name into the Font Style field with Apple Pencil and Procreate will switch to it.

Kerning, tracking, leading, and baseline

Motion designers will care most about the Design section:

• Tracking adjusts spacing uniformly across all selected letters.
• Kerning adjusts the space between two specific letters. Place the cursor between them and adjust.
• Leading controls the space between lines.
• Baseline shifts the line the letters sit on, which is handy for fixing optical misalignments.

You can also set alignment (left, center, right, justified), add underline or outline, toggle capitalization options, and switch to vertical text. Underline can behave inconsistently in some versions. Also, toggling vertical text off can shift your text away from its prior position, so recenter it afterward.

One practical habit: set opacity on the layer, not inside the text panel. The Layers panel is faster to reach and behaves the same way for any layer type.

Vector Text vs. Rasterized Text

This is the decision that most affects your next steps.

While text is vector, you can retype it, change font, spacing, and alignment, and add underline, outline, or capitalization. You can also move it, apply uniform transformations, change opacity, add clipping or layer masks, and group it with other layers.

Once rasterized, text becomes pixel data on a normal layer. You lose retyping and font changes, but gain access to everything else in Procreate: selections, adjustments, distortions, painting directly on the letters, and merging.

You can recognize a vector text layer by the "A" in its thumbnail, and its name updates automatically to match its content. You can override that by tapping the layer and choosing Rename.

A reasonable workflow is to finalize spelling, font, and spacing first, duplicate the text layer as a backup, then rasterize the duplicate for painting or distortion. If a client changes the copy later, your editable original is still there.

Add Hand-Drawn Letters Instead

Typed text is not the only way to add letters. For custom lettering, the usual approach is to use the text tool as scaffolding:

1. Type your word or phrase with the text tool and pick a font close to the shape you want, such as a chunky sans for bubble letters.
2. Lower the text layer's opacity and lock it so it doesn't get nudged.
3. Create a new layer above and trace or redraw the letterforms, adding your own swashes, weight changes, and details.
4. Hide or delete the guide layer when you're done.

Turn on Drawing Guide (Actions > Canvas > Drawing Guide) and set the grid size to match your lettering scale. This keeps baselines and spacing consistent across long phrases. For angled or curved layouts, a custom grid or the Symmetry tool can help. Proofread the typed guide before tracing, because it's much easier to catch a typo there than after you've inked every letter.

Get Procreate Lettering Into a Motion Pipeline

For motion designers, Procreate lettering is usually an asset rather than the final deliverable. A few export habits make the handoff smoother.

• Separate layers per word or letter. If you plan to animate letters individually in After Effects, draw or type each on its own layer. Rasterize vector text first if you want predictable results downstream.
• Hide the background. Hide any background layer before exporting so you get transparency.
• Export a transparent still for single frames. Choose an export format that supports transparency, or a layered format if you need to separate elements in your compositing app.
• Work at the final resolution. Draw large enough that scaling in your comp doesn't soften the edges. If you plan to push in on the lettering with a camera move, build the canvas for the biggest crop you expect.

From there, the lettering goes into After Effects, Premiere Pro, Blender, Cinema 4D, or Nuke like any other 2D element: as a texture, a matte, a title layer, or a plate for 3D extrusion.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

The font won't change. Make sure text is highlighted, or that the cursor is not actively blinking, before choosing a font. Style changes apply only to the selected characters.

My letters look cut off or wrapped oddly. Check the bounding box width. A narrow box forces line breaks, and resizing the box does not resize the text.

I can't smudge, paint, or distort my text. These tools require raster layers. Duplicate the text layer, then rasterize the duplicate.

My custom font is missing. Import it through the Edit Style Panel, using a TTC, TTF, or OTF file.

Spacing looks uneven. Use tracking for global changes and kerning for individual pairs. Awkward pairs like "AV" or "To" usually need manual adjustment.

Underline looks glitchy. Some versions handle underline inconsistently. Try toggling it off and on, or draw the line yourself on a separate layer.

Quick Reference

Adding letters in Procreate is a few taps, but the choices that follow, such as vector or raster, typed or traced, and how you organize layers, determine how easily the work moves into your animation and compositing pipeline. Decide early whether the lettering is a finished piece or a source asset, and structure your layers and exports accordingly.

To add letters in Procreate, tap the wrench icon to open Actions, choose Add, then tap Add Text. A text box appears with the placeholder word "Text" already highlighted, so you can type over it with the keyboard or Apple Pencil Scribble. Double-tap the text to open the Text Entry Companion, where you can change the font, alignment, and styling. If you want hand-drawn letters instead, draw them on a regular layer, using a typed layer as a tracing guide if you like.

Add Typed Letters With the Text Tool

Procreate's text tool is vector-based until you rasterize it, which means you can retype, restyle, and scale it without quality loss.

1. Open your canvas and tap the wrench icon (Actions).
2. Tap Add, then Add Text.
3. A bounding box appears with the word "Text" selected, using your current color and Procreate's default font, Helvetica Neue.
4. Type to replace the placeholder with your own letters. The box expands to fit what you type.
5. Tap outside the box or tap the Selection tool to deselect and see the result on the canvas.

If you'd rather write than type, Apple Pencil Scribble converts handwriting into editable text. You can also paste copied text: double-tap the box to open the Text Entry Companion and choose Paste. That's useful for longer copy, such as a lower-third script or a title card you've already written elsewhere.

Move and resize the text box

Drag the bounding box to reposition your text. While it stays in vector mode, text can sit partly off the canvas without being clipped. To change the container, drag the blue nodes on either side of the box. Resizing the box does not scale the letters. It only changes where lines wrap, so a narrower box will break your text onto multiple lines.

To scale the letters themselves, change the font size in the Edit Style Panel, or use the Transform tool for a uniform scale.

Change Font, Style, and Design

Double-tap your text to open the Text Entry Companion. The current font name appears in the top left. Tap it to open the Edit Style Panel, where most of the typographic control lives. You can also reach the panel through "Edit Style" or the "Aa" button at the top right of the keyboard.

A few things to know:

• Selections matter. Style changes apply only to the characters you've highlighted. This lets you mix fonts or weights within one text box.
• Cursor state matters. If a blinking cursor is active, some panel options can be unresponsive. Deselect, tap the text box again, and reopen the panel.
• Fonts have styles. Where a typeface offers them, you'll see options like regular, italic, bold, and bold italic in the Style section.
• Import your own fonts. The Edit Style Panel has an Import Font option that accepts TTC, TTF, and OTF files. For motion work, this is how you match a brand typeface to an existing project.
• Scribble a font name. You can write a font name into the Font Style field with Apple Pencil and Procreate will switch to it.

Kerning, tracking, leading, and baseline

Motion designers will care most about the Design section:

• Tracking adjusts spacing uniformly across all selected letters.
• Kerning adjusts the space between two specific letters. Place the cursor between them and adjust.
• Leading controls the space between lines.
• Baseline shifts the line the letters sit on, which is handy for fixing optical misalignments.

You can also set alignment (left, center, right, justified), add underline or outline, toggle capitalization options, and switch to vertical text. Underline can behave inconsistently in some versions. Also, toggling vertical text off can shift your text away from its prior position, so recenter it afterward.

One practical habit: set opacity on the layer, not inside the text panel. The Layers panel is faster to reach and behaves the same way for any layer type.

Vector Text vs. Rasterized Text

This is the decision that most affects your next steps.

While text is vector, you can retype it, change font, spacing, and alignment, and add underline, outline, or capitalization. You can also move it, apply uniform transformations, change opacity, add clipping or layer masks, and group it with other layers.

Once rasterized, text becomes pixel data on a normal layer. You lose retyping and font changes, but gain access to everything else in Procreate: selections, adjustments, distortions, painting directly on the letters, and merging.

You can recognize a vector text layer by the "A" in its thumbnail, and its name updates automatically to match its content. You can override that by tapping the layer and choosing Rename.

A reasonable workflow is to finalize spelling, font, and spacing first, duplicate the text layer as a backup, then rasterize the duplicate for painting or distortion. If a client changes the copy later, your editable original is still there.

Add Hand-Drawn Letters Instead

Typed text is not the only way to add letters. For custom lettering, the usual approach is to use the text tool as scaffolding:

1. Type your word or phrase with the text tool and pick a font close to the shape you want, such as a chunky sans for bubble letters.
2. Lower the text layer's opacity and lock it so it doesn't get nudged.
3. Create a new layer above and trace or redraw the letterforms, adding your own swashes, weight changes, and details.
4. Hide or delete the guide layer when you're done.

Turn on Drawing Guide (Actions > Canvas > Drawing Guide) and set the grid size to match your lettering scale. This keeps baselines and spacing consistent across long phrases. For angled or curved layouts, a custom grid or the Symmetry tool can help. Proofread the typed guide before tracing, because it's much easier to catch a typo there than after you've inked every letter.

Get Procreate Lettering Into a Motion Pipeline

For motion designers, Procreate lettering is usually an asset rather than the final deliverable. A few export habits make the handoff smoother.

• Separate layers per word or letter. If you plan to animate letters individually in After Effects, draw or type each on its own layer. Rasterize vector text first if you want predictable results downstream.
• Hide the background. Hide any background layer before exporting so you get transparency.
• Export a transparent still for single frames. Choose an export format that supports transparency, or a layered format if you need to separate elements in your compositing app.
• Work at the final resolution. Draw large enough that scaling in your comp doesn't soften the edges. If you plan to push in on the lettering with a camera move, build the canvas for the biggest crop you expect.

From there, the lettering goes into After Effects, Premiere Pro, Blender, Cinema 4D, or Nuke like any other 2D element: as a texture, a matte, a title layer, or a plate for 3D extrusion.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

The font won't change. Make sure text is highlighted, or that the cursor is not actively blinking, before choosing a font. Style changes apply only to the selected characters.

My letters look cut off or wrapped oddly. Check the bounding box width. A narrow box forces line breaks, and resizing the box does not resize the text.

I can't smudge, paint, or distort my text. These tools require raster layers. Duplicate the text layer, then rasterize the duplicate.

My custom font is missing. Import it through the Edit Style Panel, using a TTC, TTF, or OTF file.

Spacing looks uneven. Use tracking for global changes and kerning for individual pairs. Awkward pairs like "AV" or "To" usually need manual adjustment.

Underline looks glitchy. Some versions handle underline inconsistently. Try toggling it off and on, or draw the line yourself on a separate layer.

Quick Reference

Adding letters in Procreate is a few taps, but the choices that follow, such as vector or raster, typed or traced, and how you organize layers, determine how easily the work moves into your animation and compositing pipeline. Decide early whether the lettering is a finished piece or a source asset, and structure your layers and exports accordingly.