To change brush opacity in Procreate, select a brush and drag the lower slider in the sidebar up to increase opacity or down to decrease it (the upper slider controls size). If opacity seems stuck or behaves unpredictably, the cause is usually Apple Pencil pressure, the brush's own settings in Brush Studio, or a Glazed blending mode. For opacity you can keep adjusting after you paint, use layer opacity instead of brush opacity.

Change Brush Opacity with the Sidebar Slider

This is the method you will use most often.

1. Tap the brush icon and pick a brush.
2. Find the two sliders on the sidebar. The lower one is opacity.
3. Drag it up to make strokes more solid, or down to make them more transparent.

The setting applies to the current brush and affects only new strokes. Strokes you have already painted don't change. This matters for production work: brush opacity is baked into the pixels the moment you lift the pencil, so you can't revisit it later except by undoing or repainting.

If you work with the sidebar on one side, your non-drawing hand can adjust the sliders while your pencil hand keeps painting. Many artists settle into a rhythm of keeping size and opacity at a few habitual values and changing them constantly mid-stroke-sequence.

Why Opacity Doesn't Match the Slider

A common complaint is that the slider reads 100% but strokes still look see-through. Several things can cause this, and they're easy to mix up.

Apple Pencil pressure

Many Procreate brushes vary opacity with pencil pressure. With default settings, getting a fully opaque mark can take more pressure than feels natural, and the same brush often looks more opaque when you paint with a finger. Two fixes:

• Adjust the pressure curve. Open the Actions menu (wrench icon), then Prefs, then Edit Pressure Curve. The default is a straight diagonal line. Bending it so less pressure produces more output makes opaque marks easier. Brushes like the default Round Brush and Flat Brush in the Painting set respond strongly to this.
• Edit the brush itself. Duplicate the brush first (swipe left on it, tap Duplicate) so you keep the original. Open the copy to enter Brush Studio, go to the Properties tab, and push both the minimum and maximum opacity sliders to 100%.

Brushes designed to be translucent

Some brushes will never produce a fully solid mark. The Gouache brush in the Painting set is one example. If you need solid coverage, switch to a brush designed for it. Many brushes in the Inking set paint at full or near-full opacity regardless of pressure, which also makes them predictable for line work.

Glazed blending and the brush's source shape

If a textured brush stays pale even with pressure and opacity maxed out, check its Dynamics settings. A brush set to Glazed renders differently from one set to Normal, and the brush's source texture also matters. In a brush source file, white paints at full opacity, black is transparent, and gray is semi-opaque. A source texture with very little solid white will look thin no matter what the slider says. Switching a Glazed brush to Normal often makes it paint noticeably darker. It won't fix every case, since some brushes still don't vary opacity with pressure even in Normal mode.

Always duplicate a brush before changing these settings so you can return to the original behavior.

Change Layer Opacity (Non-Destructive)

Layer opacity is the better tool when you want to keep adjusting.

1. Open the Layers panel in the top right.
2. Tap the small letter to the right of the layer name. It is "N" by default, for Normal blend mode.
3. Use the opacity slider beneath the blend mode list.

Because you can change this value as many times as you like, it's non-destructive. Nothing in the pixels is altered, only how the layer is displayed.

Avoiding opacity buildup

When you paint overlapping strokes at low brush opacity, the overlaps get darker, producing blotchy fills. A reliable workaround is to paint with an opaque brush on a dedicated layer, then lower that layer's opacity. The strokes are fully opaque inside the layer, so they don't stack visibly, and the entire layer reads as translucent. The tradeoff is that you can't see through individual elements within the layer to each other, because the opacity applies to the layer as a whole.

You can also reduce buildup by choosing brushes that are not inherently very translucent, or by adjusting the brush's glaze-related settings in the rendering options of Brush Studio.

Change Opacity of a Selection

You can also lower the opacity of just part of a layer.

1. Open Selections and choose a selection method.
2. Make your selection.
3. Open Layers and tap the layer that contains the paint with two fingers at the same time.
4. Slide a finger left on the canvas to reduce opacity, or right to increase it.

Be careful here. Once you exit this mode, the change is applied, and it is destructive. You can undo it immediately, but you can't revisit it later the way you can with layer opacity. Duplicate the layer first if you might want the original.

Choosing the Right Opacity Control

Why This Matters Beyond Illustration

Procreate shows up in motion pipelines more than you might expect: boards and animatics, hand-drawn textures, grain and dust elements, mattes, ink lines, and style frames that define a look before anyone opens After Effects. Opacity decisions made there carry downstream.

• Mattes and masks. Soft-edged or semi-transparent shapes painted with pressure-sensitive brushes carry their gradations into compositing. If you want a hard, predictable alpha, use a full-opacity brush and keep the edges deliberate.
• Textures and overlays. Painting at full opacity on its own layer and controlling intensity with layer opacity lets you rebalance later, similar to adjusting a layer in After Effects or Nuke instead of re-rendering the element.
• Style frames. Keeping opacity adjustments at the layer level means you can revise a frame after feedback without repainting.

The principle is the same one you already use in compositing: keep adjustments as live parameters instead of baking them in.

Quick Troubleshooting Checklist

• Strokes too faint at 100%: Check pressure curve, then the brush's min/max opacity in Brush Studio.
• Strokes inconsistent between finger and pencil: The brush is pressure-dependent. Adjust the curve or duplicate and edit the brush.
• Texture brush looks washed out: Check whether it uses Glazed in Dynamics, and look at how much solid white its source shape contains.
• Overlaps get darker: Paint opaque on one layer and lower the layer opacity.
• Can't re-adjust opacity later: You probably changed brush or selection opacity. Use layer opacity next time.
• Brush never gets solid: It may be designed that way. Pick a different brush.

Summary

Brush opacity in Procreate is controlled by the lower sidebar slider, but what you see on the canvas also depends on pressure response, the brush's own properties, and blending mode. For flexibility, apply opacity at the layer level. For consistent coverage, duplicate and edit a brush so its minimum and maximum opacity are both 100%. Treat selection opacity as a one-way change. Handled this way, your Procreate frames arrive in After Effects or Nuke ready to be adjusted instead of repainted.

To change brush opacity in Procreate, select a brush and drag the lower slider in the sidebar up to increase opacity or down to decrease it (the upper slider controls size). If opacity seems stuck or behaves unpredictably, the cause is usually Apple Pencil pressure, the brush's own settings in Brush Studio, or a Glazed blending mode. For opacity you can keep adjusting after you paint, use layer opacity instead of brush opacity.

Change Brush Opacity with the Sidebar Slider

This is the method you will use most often.

1. Tap the brush icon and pick a brush.
2. Find the two sliders on the sidebar. The lower one is opacity.
3. Drag it up to make strokes more solid, or down to make them more transparent.

The setting applies to the current brush and affects only new strokes. Strokes you have already painted don't change. This matters for production work: brush opacity is baked into the pixels the moment you lift the pencil, so you can't revisit it later except by undoing or repainting.

If you work with the sidebar on one side, your non-drawing hand can adjust the sliders while your pencil hand keeps painting. Many artists settle into a rhythm of keeping size and opacity at a few habitual values and changing them constantly mid-stroke-sequence.

Why Opacity Doesn't Match the Slider

A common complaint is that the slider reads 100% but strokes still look see-through. Several things can cause this, and they're easy to mix up.

Apple Pencil pressure

Many Procreate brushes vary opacity with pencil pressure. With default settings, getting a fully opaque mark can take more pressure than feels natural, and the same brush often looks more opaque when you paint with a finger. Two fixes:

• Adjust the pressure curve. Open the Actions menu (wrench icon), then Prefs, then Edit Pressure Curve. The default is a straight diagonal line. Bending it so less pressure produces more output makes opaque marks easier. Brushes like the default Round Brush and Flat Brush in the Painting set respond strongly to this.
• Edit the brush itself. Duplicate the brush first (swipe left on it, tap Duplicate) so you keep the original. Open the copy to enter Brush Studio, go to the Properties tab, and push both the minimum and maximum opacity sliders to 100%.

Brushes designed to be translucent

Some brushes will never produce a fully solid mark. The Gouache brush in the Painting set is one example. If you need solid coverage, switch to a brush designed for it. Many brushes in the Inking set paint at full or near-full opacity regardless of pressure, which also makes them predictable for line work.

Glazed blending and the brush's source shape

If a textured brush stays pale even with pressure and opacity maxed out, check its Dynamics settings. A brush set to Glazed renders differently from one set to Normal, and the brush's source texture also matters. In a brush source file, white paints at full opacity, black is transparent, and gray is semi-opaque. A source texture with very little solid white will look thin no matter what the slider says. Switching a Glazed brush to Normal often makes it paint noticeably darker. It won't fix every case, since some brushes still don't vary opacity with pressure even in Normal mode.

Always duplicate a brush before changing these settings so you can return to the original behavior.

Change Layer Opacity (Non-Destructive)

Layer opacity is the better tool when you want to keep adjusting.

1. Open the Layers panel in the top right.
2. Tap the small letter to the right of the layer name. It is "N" by default, for Normal blend mode.
3. Use the opacity slider beneath the blend mode list.

Because you can change this value as many times as you like, it's non-destructive. Nothing in the pixels is altered, only how the layer is displayed.

Avoiding opacity buildup

When you paint overlapping strokes at low brush opacity, the overlaps get darker, producing blotchy fills. A reliable workaround is to paint with an opaque brush on a dedicated layer, then lower that layer's opacity. The strokes are fully opaque inside the layer, so they don't stack visibly, and the entire layer reads as translucent. The tradeoff is that you can't see through individual elements within the layer to each other, because the opacity applies to the layer as a whole.

You can also reduce buildup by choosing brushes that are not inherently very translucent, or by adjusting the brush's glaze-related settings in the rendering options of Brush Studio.

Change Opacity of a Selection

You can also lower the opacity of just part of a layer.

1. Open Selections and choose a selection method.
2. Make your selection.
3. Open Layers and tap the layer that contains the paint with two fingers at the same time.
4. Slide a finger left on the canvas to reduce opacity, or right to increase it.

Be careful here. Once you exit this mode, the change is applied, and it is destructive. You can undo it immediately, but you can't revisit it later the way you can with layer opacity. Duplicate the layer first if you might want the original.

Choosing the Right Opacity Control

Why This Matters Beyond Illustration

Procreate shows up in motion pipelines more than you might expect: boards and animatics, hand-drawn textures, grain and dust elements, mattes, ink lines, and style frames that define a look before anyone opens After Effects. Opacity decisions made there carry downstream.

• Mattes and masks. Soft-edged or semi-transparent shapes painted with pressure-sensitive brushes carry their gradations into compositing. If you want a hard, predictable alpha, use a full-opacity brush and keep the edges deliberate.
• Textures and overlays. Painting at full opacity on its own layer and controlling intensity with layer opacity lets you rebalance later, similar to adjusting a layer in After Effects or Nuke instead of re-rendering the element.
• Style frames. Keeping opacity adjustments at the layer level means you can revise a frame after feedback without repainting.

The principle is the same one you already use in compositing: keep adjustments as live parameters instead of baking them in.

Quick Troubleshooting Checklist

• Strokes too faint at 100%: Check pressure curve, then the brush's min/max opacity in Brush Studio.
• Strokes inconsistent between finger and pencil: The brush is pressure-dependent. Adjust the curve or duplicate and edit the brush.
• Texture brush looks washed out: Check whether it uses Glazed in Dynamics, and look at how much solid white its source shape contains.
• Overlaps get darker: Paint opaque on one layer and lower the layer opacity.
• Can't re-adjust opacity later: You probably changed brush or selection opacity. Use layer opacity next time.
• Brush never gets solid: It may be designed that way. Pick a different brush.

Summary

Brush opacity in Procreate is controlled by the lower sidebar slider, but what you see on the canvas also depends on pressure response, the brush's own properties, and blending mode. For flexibility, apply opacity at the layer level. For consistent coverage, duplicate and edit a brush so its minimum and maximum opacity are both 100%. Treat selection opacity as a one-way change. Handled this way, your Procreate frames arrive in After Effects or Nuke ready to be adjusted instead of repainted.