If you own one of the best iPads and are an avid Apple Pencil user then you probably already know about Procreate – a digital illustration app that's been at the top of Apple's pay-for iPad apps for six consecutive years, costing £/$10 – as we highlighted in our iPad Pro 12.9-inch M2 review.
Now Procreate has just dropped a game-changing upgrade for animators, wrapped into an entirely different app package, called Procreate Dreams. Again, there's no subscription to worry about, it's just a one-time payment of £/$19.99 and all its tools and creative possibilities are at your fingertips (well, at your Apple Pencil's tip).
Procreate Dreams has features such as Performing, which brings work to life in real-time, whether you're an experienced animator or total newbie. The app offers drawing, cel animation, keyframing, video editing and compositing all in the one app. Sounds like a fun one to get our hands on – although the app isn't out yet, it will be released globally "later this year" from 22 November, so mark that date in your calendars.
From a power perspective, Procreate Dreams leverages Apple silicon, meaning the M1- and M2-powered iPads offer a world of possibility. You can work on raster files up to one million by one million pixels and multiple layers with real-time results by utilising the multi-touch timeline interface – which you can see a glimpse of in the official image above.
As Apple continues to advance its graphics proposition with Metal, that acceleration is what allows Procreate Dreams to instantly playback and render in real-time. You can even work with ProRes video up to 8K resolution, whether you wish to add animation to video or just edit video in the app, the world is your oyster. There's even an audio engine to cater for sound.
As we've so often said in the best iPads for students, sometimes you don't need one of the best laptops and to spend thousands to get hold of creative tools that could be a great step into enabling your work through school, college and university. That said, Procreate caters for professionals too - you can open 1TB files and have eternal undo editing history so nothing will ever go amiss. Ideal for experimentation. And ideal for iPad!
