Procreate is one of the best programs for digital art, and a lot of people use it, especially if you follow Instagram artists.
The problem with it is that you can’t use it if you don’t have an i-pad (been there). So, I’ll list some of the best alternatives that I have tried and used for digital drawing.
Krita
Krita is my most favorite app when it comes to digital drawing. It is a software made by a group of people who happen to be artists too.
Krita is good for sketching and comic making. For me, it was the easiest program to master, because the canvas is simple, logical.
There are a lot of brushes to choose from and you can download a pack of them from the internet.
You can even customize them or make new ones.
The program is free to download!
The only thing I’m dissatisfied with in this program is that I don’t get smooth lines as much as I wanted to, even with the stabilizer tool.
But all in all, Krita is at the top of my list as an alternative for Procreate.
Photoshop
As we all know, Photoshop is mostly used for retouching or photoshopping images (shocker!) or blurring background images. It has a lot of options and tools that are really useful.
As an artist, I rarely use Photoshop, but I’ve seen drawings made from Photoshop and they were amazing! I always got the feeling as if those drawings were painted on a real canvas.
The program has lots of brushes, and has useful options such as cropping really precisely. You can easily master this program with the many tutorials on the internet.
The only downfall of this app is the cost-it’s kind of pricey.
Autodesk SketchBook
SketchBook is one of the best drawing applications for skechers and designers.
It has plenty of advanced features and has an interesting interface. It’s very easy to get used to it, but a little bit harder to learn it.
It has a lesser quantity of brushes to choose from, though, so that is a minus for me.
But if you can work with that, then this program is for you! It even has a ruler!
And the full version is completely free!
Concepts
Concepts is a vector drawing app and it performs great when it comes to sketching. You can get those strokes like it was done freehand.
So it’s good for those kinds of drawings and for digitizing blueprints. There are many brushes and multiple layers is supported.
Illustrator
This one is a very good program if you want your strokes to be smooth. It corrects every wobbly line and that’s why I often use Illustrator first to draw outlines of my drawing.
But remember, it’s a vector program, and you can’t get painted pictures here.
But all in all, this one is really useful for if you are a precise person like me and hate those uneven lines like me.
If you don’t want to install a desktop version, you can use Illustrator online editor to save space on your hard drive.
ArtRage
ArtRage is another good alternative for Procreate. It is mostly used if you want to get an old fashioned feel.
The best feature about ArtRage is that you can mix colors to create textures, shades and so on, so it’s like drawing on a real canvas.
The best feature of this program is that it’s easy to use, but it has a lack of advanced tools and it’s costly.
Corel Painter
Corel Painter is recognized worldwide as one of the best apps for realistic painting and the feel of traditional canvas painting.
It has hundreds of brushes and dozens of paper textures, and supports importing and editing Photoshop files.
The interface isn’t hard to learn and get used to. It allows you to draw perfectly straight lines with any chosen brush and is particularly useful when drawing interiors or urban environments with a lot of architecture.
The only downfall of this program is that it’s expensive.
GIMP
If you want to retouch or edit your images, you can use GIMP. It can convert different image formats, do free-form drawing and more specialized tasks.
Though it’s not as good as Photoshop, GIMP still has filters, layers and many more tools, so it isn’t just for editing.And it’s free!
Paint Tool Sai
One of the other most used programs as an alternative to procreate is Paint Tool Sai.
It is a raster graphics editor and painting software. It has a very simple but powerful user interface, which is easy to learn.
It allows multiple documents to be opened at the same time and has a variety of brushes that can be customized.
They are very easy to use.
SAI has tools like transformation, selection, resize, rotate, move and a free transform tool.
Because it is mostly used for drawing and not image editing, the only adjustments present are Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation, and therefore no support of a higher level of editing.
MediBang Paint
With MediBang Paint you can do almost everything with it that you’d do with Procreate. It has a classic interface with a lot of the painting and editing tools you know from Photoshop.
However, shading is a little harder, but you can do it after some practice.
This program has a great set of brushes, is easy to use, and has cool tools like joining layers. So, it’s very popular with artists!
So that’s the whole list of programs that I would recommend as alternatives for Procreate.
They mostly have the same features, but even then can be used very differently. I hope I helped you with choosing one, and good luck!