How to set up your canvas in Procreate

Future proof your artwork with the correct canvas settings!

The canvas settings in Procreate can feel like a complete minefield, and they often leave us stuck before we’ve even begun.

If you’ve ever wondered what DPI actually means, how pixels affect your artwork, what canvas size you should be using, or which colour profile to choose, you’re in the right place!

In this post, we’re going to break it all down so it finally makes sense.

Setting up your canvas correctly in Procreate is incredibly important and can save you hours of time in the long run. If you’ve ever spent ages working on a pattern only to realise your settings were wrong, and you had to start all over again, you’ll know exactly what I mean. (I’ve been there!!)

The good news? While it might look complicated, it really doesn’t have to be.

This post is mainly aimed at artists who are creating artwork before they know exactly how it will be used. If you’re designing for a particular company or client, they will usually provide very specific file specifications, and in that case, those are the settings you should follow from the very start.

However, as surface pattern designers, we’re often creating artwork without knowing how the pattern will be used in the future. We design the pattern first but opportunities for that pattern may not come along for quite some time after we’ve finished.

The purpose of this post is to help you choose canvas settings that keep your options as open as possible, so your artwork can be used in the future without needing to be recreated from scratch with different settings.

We'll be focusing mainly on what all the settings mean when you set up a new canvas in Procreate. We'll cover pixels, DPI, dimensions and colour profiles.

Pixels

It’s actually hard to know where to start as pixels, canvas dimensions and DPI are all closely connected!

But let’s start with exploring first what a pixel is.

A pixel is simply a dot of colour.

When you draw something in Procreate, you are putting a series of pixels (or dots of colour) onto your canvas. You can see these dots of colour by zooming into your canvas. (You will actually see them as little squares of colour when you zoom in).

DPI

When you see DPI on your canvas setup, this stands for ‘dots per inch’ and in the Procreate canvas setup this means how many pixels there are in an inch.

The more pixels there are in an inch, the crisper the image will look.

The fewer pixels there are in an inch the fuzzier it will look. (We call this the resolution)

The higher the DPI, the higher the resolution and the crisper the image will look.

The lower the DPI, the lower the resolution and the fuzzier the image will look.

If you look at the image below, the top half is set at 300 DPI and the bottom half at 45 DPI. You can see the difference in quality or 'fuzziness'.

As surface pattern designers, we want to be working at the highest resolution possible so our work is crisp and good quality.

In general, 300 DPI is considered ‘high quality’ and it’s unusual for a company to ask for something higher than this (although it can happen!)

You may be wondering then why you don’t start with the highest DPI possible to cater for all eventualities. Well, the answer to that is the higher the DPI you choose, the fewer layers you will have to work with in Procreate.

Having only a few layers to work with can be a problem as it will be hard to keep your colours and layers separate in order to keep the file flexible for changes later on.

So, I’d always recommend starting with a DPI of 300 if you’re not creating for anything specific. This means your final file will be a high resolution and suitable for most projects that might come your way.

In Procreate you can’t increase the DPI of your canvas once you’ve started so it is crucial to get this correct right from the start!

Canvas Dimensions

When you first click to create a new canvas in Procreate, this is the first decision you are going to have to make: how big do you want your canvas to be?

You can choose whether it is measured in pixels, inches, centimetres or millimetres.

Here in the UK we used cm/mm much more than inches but I find that in the industry as a whole inches is the most common measurement and it is also much easier to understand its relationship with DPI so I always go for inches.

In Procreate you cannot scale something up once you have created it so as with DPI we need to go as big as possible, bearing in mind that the bigger the canvas the fewer layers you’ll have to work with – it’s always a balancing act!

I’d suggest something around 12 inches at 300 DPI gives a good balance of scale, resolution and layers.

Once you have decided on the size and DPI you can also then work out the size in pixels. (You don't have to do this, but sometimes it's helpful if someone gives you a project and the dimensions are in pixels not inches)

Here's the equation to use if you need to work out the size in pixels:

Inches x DPI = pixels

In the example I have given above, the canvas is 12x12 inches and the DPI is 300 so...

12 x 300 =3600

This means the canvas measures 3600 pixels across.

Colour Profiles

Colour profiles are totally separate to pixels and dimensions but are also important when we set up the canvas.

You may not have even explored the colour profiles in Procreate before and that’s absolutely fine. The default in Procreate when you set up your canvas is sRGB and that is the safest option to stick with if you’re not sure what your design is going to be used for in the future.

In General, RGB profiles are used for images that are going to appear on a screen (for example on a website) and CMYK is for images that are to be printed.

Confusingly, as surface pattern designers, we are usually creating patterns to be printed but in reality many printers can convert RGB colour profiles now, and many print on demand sites (like Spoonflower) actually ask for your designs to be in RGB.

If you are given a project that requires CMYK after you have created your pattern, it is possible to convert it but the colours will often look different once you have made the conversion and it may take a bit of tweaking.

For new pattern designers, when you are just starting out, I would stick to the default option of RGB in Procreate. I always create in this colour profile and it hasn’t caused me any difficulties so far in the licensing opportunities I have had.

My best advice for canvas settings

If I am creating new patterns and I don’t know yet what they will be used for, I generally create with Spoonflower in mind as I know that if they are never picked up for licensing they can still have earning potential on Spoonflower.

So, my best recommendations for setting up your canvas are these specifications:

Dimensions: 12x12 inches

DPI: 300

Colour Profile: (Default) sRGB

There’s one more thing to note about Spoonflower which can be confusing…

Spoonflower actually asks for 150 DPI as in reality their printers don’t create much difference between 150 and 300.

So, does that mean we should create in 150 DPI from the start? I would highly advise you don’t and this is why…

As I’ve said previously, you can’t scale up dimensions or DPI in Procreate once you have started as you will lose resolution but you can scale down. If you were to create in 150 DPI for Spoonflower you could never use this for another licensing opportunity that needed a higher resolution.

Solution: Create in 300 DPI and upload to Spoonflower in this resolution. In the upload process Spoonflower will automatically convert your image to 150 which in reality makes it twice as big (if you’re mathematically minded this makes sense if you look at the equation I showed you earlier!)

I find this a huge bonus as it means that the designs I create at 12x12 come up big enough for wallpaper in Spoonflower. I always add some smaller sizes too to cater for people printing fabric or home décor who might want a smaller scale.

So there we have it! A whistle stop tour through canvas settings in Procreate! I hope this has given you some understanding of what all these things mean and confidence to set up your canvas without anxiety and without limiting your opportunities later on.

Please do ask questions in the comments section below if you need more clarity on any of these points or if you have further questions. I’m always happy to help if I can!

Want to learn more?

Both my Procreate classes walk you through the canvas set up, as well as breaking down those trickier technical skills that you need in surface pattern design!

Just click on the images below to learn more.