To color an image in Procreate, import it, create a new layer beneath or above your line art (set to Multiply if above), and paint or fill with Color Drop. To change the colors of an existing image or photo, use Adjustments > Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Color Balance, Curves, or Recolor. Work on separate layers so the original stays intact and every color decision can be revised later.

Set up the canvas and import your image

Create a canvas at the size and resolution you'll need for final delivery. If the artwork is going into a video or motion project, match your comp dimensions or go larger so you have room to scale and push in. Check the canvas color profile at creation, and pick sRGB if your video pipeline expects it.

To bring in the image:

1. Tap the wrench (Actions) icon.
2. Choose Add, then Insert a file or Insert a photo. If the sketch is on paper, Take a photo also works.
3. Set the transform tool to Uniform and resize, or use Fit to Canvas.

If you photographed a paper sketch, clean it up before coloring. Drop saturation to zero with Adjustments > Hue, Saturation, Brightness. Then open Curves and drag the white point toward the left until the paper background turns white. Erase any dark patches left along the edges. Good lighting when you take the photo makes this much easier.

Method 1: Paint on a separate layer

This is the safest way to color a drawing, because the line art is never touched.

If the line art has a transparent background:

1. Open the Layers panel and tap + to add a layer.
2. Drag the new layer below the line art.
3. Choose a brush and a color, then paint. The lines stay visible on top.

If the line art has a white background: a layer underneath will be hidden. Tap the N on the line art layer and change the blend mode to Multiply (or Darker Color). The white drops out and the lines stay, so the layer below shows through.

Alternative: color above the lines. Lock the line art layer (swipe it left and tap Lock) to prevent accidents. Add a new layer above it, set that layer to Multiply, and paint. Your color blends with the lines instead of covering them. This approach suits a looser, marker-like look.

Start with big blocks of color for the main shapes, including the background, then refine. You don't need a finished palette to begin. It's often faster to block in, judge the relationships, and adjust.

Method 2: Fill shapes with Color Drop

Color Drop is the quickest route to clean, flat color, which is useful for graphic styles, character flats, and anything you'll later separate into passes.

1. Make sure the shape you want to fill is closed. A single gap in the line will let color flood the surrounding area.
2. Select a color, then drag the color swatch from the top-right corner onto the shape.
3. Hold at the end of the drag to adjust Color Fill Threshold if the fill leaves fringes along the lines.

For more reliable fills, use a Reference layer:

1. On the line art layer, tap the layer and choose Reference.
2. Add a new empty layer for color.
3. Drop color into shapes. Procreate samples the reference layer for the boundaries but fills the empty layer.

This keeps fills off the line art and gives you a dedicated color layer that's easy to recolor, adjust, or export separately.

Method 3: Shade and refine with clipping masks and Alpha Lock

Once your flats are down, you can add dimension without leaving the shapes.

• Clipping mask: Add a new layer above a flat color layer, tap it, and choose Clipping Mask. Anything you paint is confined to the pixels of the layer below. Set this layer to Multiply for shadows or Add/Screen for highlights.
• Alpha Lock: Swipe two fingers right on a layer to lock its transparent pixels. You can then paint only on existing content. It's faster than a clipping mask but destructive, since the original color is overwritten.

For production work, clipping masks are usually the better choice. Shadow, light, and texture each live on their own layer, so changing a color later doesn't mean repainting.

Method 4: Recolor an existing image with Adjustments

If you're changing color on an image rather than painting new color, use the Adjustments menu (the magic wand icon). Adjustments apply to the active layer, so duplicate it first if you want a safe fallback.

Hue, Saturation, Brightness

The quickest global change. Hue shifts the overall color tone, Saturation pushes color toward gray or toward maximum vibrancy, and Brightness controls lightness. This works well for testing alternate colorways of a flat illustration.

Color Balance

Color Balance shifts the image toward red, green, or blue on one side and cyan, magenta, or yellow on the other. You can limit the change to Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights. Midtones is the default and gives the most even result. This is the tool for correcting a color cast or adding a split-tone look, such as cool shadows and warm highlights.

Curves

Curves give the most precise control over both contrast and color. The graph shows the tonal values of the layer as a straight line, with a histogram behind it. Bend the line to change brightness and contrast, and edit the red, green, and blue channels individually to grade color.

Recolor

Recolor replaces specific areas with a new color. Select a color, then drag it onto the area you want to change. It's useful for swapping a character's jacket or a single prop color without selecting and refilling.

In every Adjustments panel, tap the Adjustments icon again or choose another tool to commit the change. Two-finger tap to undo.

Choose and save colors efficiently

Open the color panel to pick from several modes:

• Disc: an outer hue ring with an inner saturation disc, good for intuitive picking.
• Classic: Hue, Saturation, and Brightness sliders with a square picker.
• Harmony: color suggestions based on your current shade.
• Value: numerical and hex inputs for exact matches, such as brand colors.
• Palettes: saved swatch sets, which you can create, import, or build from a photo.

Procreate also keeps your last ten colors in History. For client work, build a project palette early, using hex values on the Value tab for anything that must match a brand guide. That keeps the colors consistent across illustrations that will end up in the same sequence.

Take your colored artwork into a motion pipeline

If the artwork is destined for animation or compositing, export with that in mind:

• Export layered files. A PSD preserves layers, so you can import it into After Effects as a composition and animate flats, shadows, and line art independently.
• Keep elements on separate layers. Background, character parts, shading, and line art should each be isolated before export. It saves hours of rotoscoping or masking later.
• Use PNG for transparent single elements.
• Check color on import. Compare the image in After Effects against what you saw in Procreate. If the colors shift, revisit the canvas profile and your project's color management settings.

Where Styleframe fits

Procreate is a strong place to establish a look: palette, line quality, shading logic. Styleframe is an AI video and motion tool built for artist-directed control, and it can carry that look into moving imagery. Rather than a one-click black box, generation is driven by your own reference images, video clips, and keyframes.

Some practical ways the two combine:

• Restyle and Ink-and-Paint: use your colored Procreate frame as a style reference, so footage or other imagery picks up its palette and linework. These are reference-driven style transfer tools, so your artwork leads.
• Frames-to-Video: set a colored illustration as a start or end keyframe and generate the motion between them, with iteration that doesn't overwrite earlier takes.
• 2D-to-3D and Turntable: extend a flat illustrated character or prop into a dimensional version or a rotating view.
• Remove Background and 4K Upscale: isolate an element for compositing, or bring a lower-resolution result up to production-ready 4K.

Output exports as image sequences, so it slots into the compositing workflow you already use in After Effects or Nuke. An After Effects plugin is on the way. You keep your pipeline, and Procreate remains the place where the artwork is made.

Troubleshooting common color problems

• Color covers my line art. Move the color layer below the lines, or set it to Multiply if it's above.
• Color doesn't show beneath a white-background drawing. Change the line art layer's blend mode to Multiply or Darker Color.
• Color Drop floods the whole canvas. There's a gap in the lines. Close it, or raise the threshold carefully, and use a Reference layer.
• Fills leave a light fringe around lines. Increase the Color Fill Threshold slightly, or put the fills on a layer beneath the lines.
• Adjustments affect everything. They apply only to the active layer, so check which layer is selected, or merge or group layers first if you want a global change.
• Colors look different after export. Check the canvas color profile and the color settings in your destination app.

A workable default workflow

For most illustration work headed to motion: import and clean the sketch, set lines to Multiply or lock them, use a Reference layer for Color Drop flats, shade with clipping mask layers, and use Hue/Saturation/Brightness, Color Balance, or Curves for alternate colorways and final grading. Export a layered PSD for compositing. Everything stays editable, which matters when a client asks for a different color on round three.

To color an image in Procreate, import it, create a new layer beneath or above your line art (set to Multiply if above), and paint or fill with Color Drop. To change the colors of an existing image or photo, use Adjustments > Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Color Balance, Curves, or Recolor. Work on separate layers so the original stays intact and every color decision can be revised later.

Set up the canvas and import your image

Create a canvas at the size and resolution you'll need for final delivery. If the artwork is going into a video or motion project, match your comp dimensions or go larger so you have room to scale and push in. Check the canvas color profile at creation, and pick sRGB if your video pipeline expects it.

To bring in the image:

1. Tap the wrench (Actions) icon.
2. Choose Add, then Insert a file or Insert a photo. If the sketch is on paper, Take a photo also works.
3. Set the transform tool to Uniform and resize, or use Fit to Canvas.

If you photographed a paper sketch, clean it up before coloring. Drop saturation to zero with Adjustments > Hue, Saturation, Brightness. Then open Curves and drag the white point toward the left until the paper background turns white. Erase any dark patches left along the edges. Good lighting when you take the photo makes this much easier.

Method 1: Paint on a separate layer

This is the safest way to color a drawing, because the line art is never touched.

If the line art has a transparent background:

1. Open the Layers panel and tap + to add a layer.
2. Drag the new layer below the line art.
3. Choose a brush and a color, then paint. The lines stay visible on top.

If the line art has a white background: a layer underneath will be hidden. Tap the N on the line art layer and change the blend mode to Multiply (or Darker Color). The white drops out and the lines stay, so the layer below shows through.

Alternative: color above the lines. Lock the line art layer (swipe it left and tap Lock) to prevent accidents. Add a new layer above it, set that layer to Multiply, and paint. Your color blends with the lines instead of covering them. This approach suits a looser, marker-like look.

Start with big blocks of color for the main shapes, including the background, then refine. You don't need a finished palette to begin. It's often faster to block in, judge the relationships, and adjust.

Method 2: Fill shapes with Color Drop

Color Drop is the quickest route to clean, flat color, which is useful for graphic styles, character flats, and anything you'll later separate into passes.

1. Make sure the shape you want to fill is closed. A single gap in the line will let color flood the surrounding area.
2. Select a color, then drag the color swatch from the top-right corner onto the shape.
3. Hold at the end of the drag to adjust Color Fill Threshold if the fill leaves fringes along the lines.

For more reliable fills, use a Reference layer:

1. On the line art layer, tap the layer and choose Reference.
2. Add a new empty layer for color.
3. Drop color into shapes. Procreate samples the reference layer for the boundaries but fills the empty layer.

This keeps fills off the line art and gives you a dedicated color layer that's easy to recolor, adjust, or export separately.

Method 3: Shade and refine with clipping masks and Alpha Lock

Once your flats are down, you can add dimension without leaving the shapes.

• Clipping mask: Add a new layer above a flat color layer, tap it, and choose Clipping Mask. Anything you paint is confined to the pixels of the layer below. Set this layer to Multiply for shadows or Add/Screen for highlights.
• Alpha Lock: Swipe two fingers right on a layer to lock its transparent pixels. You can then paint only on existing content. It's faster than a clipping mask but destructive, since the original color is overwritten.

For production work, clipping masks are usually the better choice. Shadow, light, and texture each live on their own layer, so changing a color later doesn't mean repainting.

Method 4: Recolor an existing image with Adjustments

If you're changing color on an image rather than painting new color, use the Adjustments menu (the magic wand icon). Adjustments apply to the active layer, so duplicate it first if you want a safe fallback.

Hue, Saturation, Brightness

The quickest global change. Hue shifts the overall color tone, Saturation pushes color toward gray or toward maximum vibrancy, and Brightness controls lightness. This works well for testing alternate colorways of a flat illustration.

Color Balance

Color Balance shifts the image toward red, green, or blue on one side and cyan, magenta, or yellow on the other. You can limit the change to Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights. Midtones is the default and gives the most even result. This is the tool for correcting a color cast or adding a split-tone look, such as cool shadows and warm highlights.

Curves

Curves give the most precise control over both contrast and color. The graph shows the tonal values of the layer as a straight line, with a histogram behind it. Bend the line to change brightness and contrast, and edit the red, green, and blue channels individually to grade color.

Recolor

Recolor replaces specific areas with a new color. Select a color, then drag it onto the area you want to change. It's useful for swapping a character's jacket or a single prop color without selecting and refilling.

In every Adjustments panel, tap the Adjustments icon again or choose another tool to commit the change. Two-finger tap to undo.

Choose and save colors efficiently

Open the color panel to pick from several modes:

• Disc: an outer hue ring with an inner saturation disc, good for intuitive picking.
• Classic: Hue, Saturation, and Brightness sliders with a square picker.
• Harmony: color suggestions based on your current shade.
• Value: numerical and hex inputs for exact matches, such as brand colors.
• Palettes: saved swatch sets, which you can create, import, or build from a photo.

Procreate also keeps your last ten colors in History. For client work, build a project palette early, using hex values on the Value tab for anything that must match a brand guide. That keeps the colors consistent across illustrations that will end up in the same sequence.

Take your colored artwork into a motion pipeline

If the artwork is destined for animation or compositing, export with that in mind:

• Export layered files. A PSD preserves layers, so you can import it into After Effects as a composition and animate flats, shadows, and line art independently.
• Keep elements on separate layers. Background, character parts, shading, and line art should each be isolated before export. It saves hours of rotoscoping or masking later.
• Use PNG for transparent single elements.
• Check color on import. Compare the image in After Effects against what you saw in Procreate. If the colors shift, revisit the canvas profile and your project's color management settings.

Where Styleframe fits

Procreate is a strong place to establish a look: palette, line quality, shading logic. Styleframe is an AI video and motion tool built for artist-directed control, and it can carry that look into moving imagery. Rather than a one-click black box, generation is driven by your own reference images, video clips, and keyframes.

Some practical ways the two combine:

• Restyle and Ink-and-Paint: use your colored Procreate frame as a style reference, so footage or other imagery picks up its palette and linework. These are reference-driven style transfer tools, so your artwork leads.
• Frames-to-Video: set a colored illustration as a start or end keyframe and generate the motion between them, with iteration that doesn't overwrite earlier takes.
• 2D-to-3D and Turntable: extend a flat illustrated character or prop into a dimensional version or a rotating view.
• Remove Background and 4K Upscale: isolate an element for compositing, or bring a lower-resolution result up to production-ready 4K.

Output exports as image sequences, so it slots into the compositing workflow you already use in After Effects or Nuke. An After Effects plugin is on the way. You keep your pipeline, and Procreate remains the place where the artwork is made.

Troubleshooting common color problems

• Color covers my line art. Move the color layer below the lines, or set it to Multiply if it's above.
• Color doesn't show beneath a white-background drawing. Change the line art layer's blend mode to Multiply or Darker Color.
• Color Drop floods the whole canvas. There's a gap in the lines. Close it, or raise the threshold carefully, and use a Reference layer.
• Fills leave a light fringe around lines. Increase the Color Fill Threshold slightly, or put the fills on a layer beneath the lines.
• Adjustments affect everything. They apply only to the active layer, so check which layer is selected, or merge or group layers first if you want a global change.
• Colors look different after export. Check the canvas color profile and the color settings in your destination app.

A workable default workflow

For most illustration work headed to motion: import and clean the sketch, set lines to Multiply or lock them, use a Reference layer for Color Drop flats, shade with clipping mask layers, and use Hue/Saturation/Brightness, Color Balance, or Curves for alternate colorways and final grading. Export a layered PSD for compositing. Everything stays editable, which matters when a client asks for a different color on round three.