Procreate has no one-tap auto-trace feature. Any guide that says otherwise is describing a manual workflow or a different app. The closest approach is to import your image, drop its opacity, lock it, and trace on new layers above it. For true automatic tracing, run the image through a dedicated tracing tool such as Illustrator's Image Trace or After Effects' Auto-trace, then bring the result back into Procreate if you want to paint over it.

Does Procreate Have an Auto-Trace Tool?

No. Procreate is a raster painting app, and it has no command that converts a photo into outlines, vectors, or brushstrokes. Community forums have had feature requests for this for years. Some ask for vector-style tracing, and others ask for "photopainting," where a brush samples the colors of an underlying photo, as in apps like ArtRage and Rebelle.

You'll find short answers online claiming that tapping Actions > Add produces an auto-generated trace. That menu only inserts files and photos. It doesn't process them.

So when people say they "automatically" trace in Procreate, they usually mean one of three things:

1. A fast manual trace over a dimmed reference layer.
2. A semi-automatic workflow using Procreate's selection and fill tools.
3. Tracing in another app and round-tripping the result.

The rest of this article covers each, with notes on where they break down.

Method 1: The Standard Manual Trace

This is the most reliable way to get a clean result, and it's quick once the setup is dialed in.

1. Import the image. In the Gallery, tap Import, or inside a canvas use Actions (wrench icon) > Add > Insert a photo.
2. Size and position it. Use the Transform tool with Uniform enabled so the proportions stay locked.
3. Lower the opacity. Open the layer's "N" menu and drag opacity down to roughly 30–50%, so your new lines stay visible against the photo.
4. Lock the layer. Swipe right on it in the Layers panel and tap Lock, so a stray touch doesn't shift your reference.
5. Add a new layer above it and trace with a brush suited to the line quality you want.
6. Use stabilization. Raise StreamLine in the brush settings for smooth, confident curves. Some artists run the same pass at strong, medium, and no smoothing, then keep whichever reads best per section.
7. Separate elements onto layers. Tracing each shape on its own layer makes recoloring and later animation much easier.

When you're finished, hide or delete the reference layer. What's left is your own linework.

Method 2: Semi-Automatic Tracing With Selections and Fills

If your goal is shapes and flat color rather than outlines, you can offload some of the manual work to Procreate's selection tools.

• Automatic selection mode. Open the Selection tool and choose Automatic. Tapping a region on a layer selects an area based on color similarity, and dragging adjusts the threshold. This is useful for isolating flat or high-contrast areas of a reference.
• Fill on a separate layer. Create a new layer, then fill the selection with Color Drop or a solid fill. Repeat region by region to build a flat-color version of the image.
• Pre-process the reference. Before selecting, use Adjustments such as Curves or Hue, Saturation, Brightness to push contrast and flatten tones. Simpler tonal regions make Automatic selections cleaner.

This is still hands-on work, but it's much faster than painting every region by hand. It works best on graphic images, logos, and illustrations with clear shapes. It struggles with photographs full of gradients, where selection edges turn ragged.

Method 3: Auto-Trace Outside Procreate

If you need genuinely automatic output, especially vector paths, use a tool built for it.

Illustrator Image Trace

Export your Procreate artwork or reference as a PNG, open it in Illustrator, and use Image Trace with a preset such as Black and White Logo, Line Art, or a color preset. Then Expand to get editable paths. Illustrator gives you the most control over thresholds, path complexity, and noise.

Vectornator / Linearity Curve

Forum users often point to Vectornator, now Linearity Curve, as a free option that runs on iPad and iPhone and includes auto-trace. It keeps you on the same device as Procreate. Be realistic about quality, though: artists report that automatic traces of detailed paintings tend to come out lumpy and need cleanup.

After Effects Auto-trace

For motion designers, this is the underrated option. In After Effects, Layer > Auto-trace converts a layer's alpha, luminance, or color channel into mask paths, either for a single frame or across a work area. Pair it with Layer > Create > Create Shapes from Vector Layer if you've brought in an Illustrator file. These routes give you editable shapes and masks you can animate directly, so the trace lands in your comp already usable.

Round-tripping

A typical loop looks like this:

1. Sketch or paint in Procreate.
2. Export a high-contrast PNG or PSD layers.
3. Trace in Illustrator or After Effects.
4. Clean up paths.
5. Optionally re-import to Procreate as a reference for painting or texture.

Remember that Procreate won't read vector paths, so anything you bring back arrives as raster pixels.

Getting Cleaner Results From Any Trace

Automatic or manual, the quality of your trace depends heavily on the input.

• Trace elements separately. Tracing a whole illustration at once usually produces messy results. Break it into characters, props, and backgrounds.
• Reduce color first. Fewer tones mean fewer odd shapes. Posterize or flatten your reference before tracing.
• Start from a sketch, not a finished painting. Tracing a rough line drawing gives much cleaner vectors than tracing a fully rendered image. Finishing in pixels first and vectorizing afterward is often more work than needed.
• Work at high resolution. Tracers need clear edges. Small, compressed, or blurry sources produce jagged paths.
• Redraw when it's faster. If an element traces badly, using the image as a guide and redrawing it is often quicker than repairing the output.
• Only trace what you have rights to. Use your own artwork or photos, or images you're licensed to use.

When You Need Style, Not Outlines: Where Styleframe Fits

Many people who search for auto-tracing don't actually need paths. They want a photo or footage frame to look hand-inked, painted, or illustrated. For motion work, tracing every frame by hand isn't realistic, and a threshold-based trace rarely looks like deliberate art.

That's where Styleframe is useful beside your existing tools. It's an AI video and motion tool built for artistic control rather than one-click black-box output:

• Ink-and-Paint and Restyle are reference-driven style transfer. You supply a reference image of the look you want, such as inked lines or a painted treatment, and apply it to your source images or video clips instead of describing it in a prompt.
• Frames-to-Video is keyframe-driven. You define the frames that matter, and the motion is generated between them.
• Remove Background, 2D-to-3D, Turntable, and 4K Upscale handle cutouts, dimensional moves, and delivery-ready resolution.

Every generation is driven by your references, clips, and keyframes. Iteration is non-destructive, so you can try variations without losing earlier work, and output is production-ready 4K.

It also fits the pipeline you already have. Styleframe exports image sequences, so the result drops into After Effects or Nuke for compositing, and an After Effects plugin is on the way. A practical combination: paint a key illustration in Procreate, use it as the style reference for Ink-and-Paint on your footage, then composite and finish in After Effects. It doesn't replace vector tracing. If you need clean Bézier paths, stay with Illustrator or After Effects' Auto-trace.

Which Method Should You Use?

FAQ

Can Procreate trace a photo automatically? No. It has no built-in auto-trace. You can trace manually or semi-automatically with selections, or use another app for automatic tracing.

Is there a free way to auto-trace on an iPad? Forum users report that Vectornator, now Linearity Curve, offers auto-trace on iPad and iPhone. Expect to clean up the results on complex images.

Can I auto-trace in After Effects instead? Yes. Auto-trace creates mask paths from a layer's channels, which suits motion work where you want to animate the result.

Why does my auto-trace look bad? Usually the source is too detailed, too soft, or too colorful. Simplify the image, trace elements individually, and increase resolution before retrying.

Procreate has no one-tap auto-trace feature. Any guide that says otherwise is describing a manual workflow or a different app. The closest approach is to import your image, drop its opacity, lock it, and trace on new layers above it. For true automatic tracing, run the image through a dedicated tracing tool such as Illustrator's Image Trace or After Effects' Auto-trace, then bring the result back into Procreate if you want to paint over it.

Does Procreate Have an Auto-Trace Tool?

No. Procreate is a raster painting app, and it has no command that converts a photo into outlines, vectors, or brushstrokes. Community forums have had feature requests for this for years. Some ask for vector-style tracing, and others ask for "photopainting," where a brush samples the colors of an underlying photo, as in apps like ArtRage and Rebelle.

You'll find short answers online claiming that tapping Actions > Add produces an auto-generated trace. That menu only inserts files and photos. It doesn't process them.

So when people say they "automatically" trace in Procreate, they usually mean one of three things:

1. A fast manual trace over a dimmed reference layer.
2. A semi-automatic workflow using Procreate's selection and fill tools.
3. Tracing in another app and round-tripping the result.

The rest of this article covers each, with notes on where they break down.

Method 1: The Standard Manual Trace

This is the most reliable way to get a clean result, and it's quick once the setup is dialed in.

1. Import the image. In the Gallery, tap Import, or inside a canvas use Actions (wrench icon) > Add > Insert a photo.
2. Size and position it. Use the Transform tool with Uniform enabled so the proportions stay locked.
3. Lower the opacity. Open the layer's "N" menu and drag opacity down to roughly 30–50%, so your new lines stay visible against the photo.
4. Lock the layer. Swipe right on it in the Layers panel and tap Lock, so a stray touch doesn't shift your reference.
5. Add a new layer above it and trace with a brush suited to the line quality you want.
6. Use stabilization. Raise StreamLine in the brush settings for smooth, confident curves. Some artists run the same pass at strong, medium, and no smoothing, then keep whichever reads best per section.
7. Separate elements onto layers. Tracing each shape on its own layer makes recoloring and later animation much easier.

When you're finished, hide or delete the reference layer. What's left is your own linework.

Method 2: Semi-Automatic Tracing With Selections and Fills

If your goal is shapes and flat color rather than outlines, you can offload some of the manual work to Procreate's selection tools.

• Automatic selection mode. Open the Selection tool and choose Automatic. Tapping a region on a layer selects an area based on color similarity, and dragging adjusts the threshold. This is useful for isolating flat or high-contrast areas of a reference.
• Fill on a separate layer. Create a new layer, then fill the selection with Color Drop or a solid fill. Repeat region by region to build a flat-color version of the image.
• Pre-process the reference. Before selecting, use Adjustments such as Curves or Hue, Saturation, Brightness to push contrast and flatten tones. Simpler tonal regions make Automatic selections cleaner.

This is still hands-on work, but it's much faster than painting every region by hand. It works best on graphic images, logos, and illustrations with clear shapes. It struggles with photographs full of gradients, where selection edges turn ragged.

Method 3: Auto-Trace Outside Procreate

If you need genuinely automatic output, especially vector paths, use a tool built for it.

Illustrator Image Trace

Export your Procreate artwork or reference as a PNG, open it in Illustrator, and use Image Trace with a preset such as Black and White Logo, Line Art, or a color preset. Then Expand to get editable paths. Illustrator gives you the most control over thresholds, path complexity, and noise.

Vectornator / Linearity Curve

Forum users often point to Vectornator, now Linearity Curve, as a free option that runs on iPad and iPhone and includes auto-trace. It keeps you on the same device as Procreate. Be realistic about quality, though: artists report that automatic traces of detailed paintings tend to come out lumpy and need cleanup.

After Effects Auto-trace

For motion designers, this is the underrated option. In After Effects, Layer > Auto-trace converts a layer's alpha, luminance, or color channel into mask paths, either for a single frame or across a work area. Pair it with Layer > Create > Create Shapes from Vector Layer if you've brought in an Illustrator file. These routes give you editable shapes and masks you can animate directly, so the trace lands in your comp already usable.

Round-tripping

A typical loop looks like this:

1. Sketch or paint in Procreate.
2. Export a high-contrast PNG or PSD layers.
3. Trace in Illustrator or After Effects.
4. Clean up paths.
5. Optionally re-import to Procreate as a reference for painting or texture.

Remember that Procreate won't read vector paths, so anything you bring back arrives as raster pixels.

Getting Cleaner Results From Any Trace

Automatic or manual, the quality of your trace depends heavily on the input.

• Trace elements separately. Tracing a whole illustration at once usually produces messy results. Break it into characters, props, and backgrounds.
• Reduce color first. Fewer tones mean fewer odd shapes. Posterize or flatten your reference before tracing.
• Start from a sketch, not a finished painting. Tracing a rough line drawing gives much cleaner vectors than tracing a fully rendered image. Finishing in pixels first and vectorizing afterward is often more work than needed.
• Work at high resolution. Tracers need clear edges. Small, compressed, or blurry sources produce jagged paths.
• Redraw when it's faster. If an element traces badly, using the image as a guide and redrawing it is often quicker than repairing the output.
• Only trace what you have rights to. Use your own artwork or photos, or images you're licensed to use.

When You Need Style, Not Outlines: Where Styleframe Fits

Many people who search for auto-tracing don't actually need paths. They want a photo or footage frame to look hand-inked, painted, or illustrated. For motion work, tracing every frame by hand isn't realistic, and a threshold-based trace rarely looks like deliberate art.

That's where Styleframe is useful beside your existing tools. It's an AI video and motion tool built for artistic control rather than one-click black-box output:

• Ink-and-Paint and Restyle are reference-driven style transfer. You supply a reference image of the look you want, such as inked lines or a painted treatment, and apply it to your source images or video clips instead of describing it in a prompt.
• Frames-to-Video is keyframe-driven. You define the frames that matter, and the motion is generated between them.
• Remove Background, 2D-to-3D, Turntable, and 4K Upscale handle cutouts, dimensional moves, and delivery-ready resolution.

Every generation is driven by your references, clips, and keyframes. Iteration is non-destructive, so you can try variations without losing earlier work, and output is production-ready 4K.

It also fits the pipeline you already have. Styleframe exports image sequences, so the result drops into After Effects or Nuke for compositing, and an After Effects plugin is on the way. A practical combination: paint a key illustration in Procreate, use it as the style reference for Ink-and-Paint on your footage, then composite and finish in After Effects. It doesn't replace vector tracing. If you need clean Bézier paths, stay with Illustrator or After Effects' Auto-trace.

Which Method Should You Use?

FAQ

Can Procreate trace a photo automatically? No. It has no built-in auto-trace. You can trace manually or semi-automatically with selections, or use another app for automatic tracing.

Is there a free way to auto-trace on an iPad? Forum users report that Vectornator, now Linearity Curve, offers auto-trace on iPad and iPhone. Expect to clean up the results on complex images.

Can I auto-trace in After Effects instead? Yes. Auto-trace creates mask paths from a layer's channels, which suits motion work where you want to animate the result.

Why does my auto-trace look bad? Usually the source is too detailed, too soft, or too colorful. Simplify the image, trace elements individually, and increase resolution before retrying.