How to Use Procreate’s Quick Menu for Faster Art

How to Use Procreate Quick Menu for Faster Art-A Quick Guide

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As we know it by now, Procreate is a  breakthrough software that is transforming the art world.

Since its first release in 2011, the iPad software Procreate has helped to significantly extend the area of digital art, thanks in part to its startlingly cheap price tag of just ten dollars (ten dollars for a one-time purchase). 

That’s the same as the monthly subscription fee for Photoshop.

Check out our Comprehensive Blog   🌐Procreate for Beginners: How to Get Started with Digital Drawing and Painting with Procreate to Upgrade your Drawing abilities with Procreate

Procreate generates significant income despite having a user-friendly and inexpensive price structure that requires just a single purchase of $10 to permanently own the software for life, or at the very least for as long as it is accessible on the App Store.   

Well, Procreate, which is now celebrating 11 years of hard work and accomplishment, is in a strong position with its latest release, version 5.1.5. 

As a result of the app’s widespread popularity, it has spawned a type of devoted following of users who are concerned about and want to use just Procreate as their primary drawing software in the future. 

The simplicity and minimalism of the Procreate interface contribute significantly to the overall power of the program. When it comes to navigating the app quickly and easily, gestures and shortcuts are essential.

‘QuickMenu’ is a feature that is hidden away and isn’t immediately noticeable. QuickMenu is a highly handy tool that enables you to create shortcuts to the tasks you do on a regular basis. 

This means that you can instantly access your favorite brush or create a new layer with the touch of a button, rather than spending time accessing many panels in search of the action you want!

Today, I’m going to teach you how to access QuickMenu, how to create your own shortcuts, and how to put this useful feature to use in a variety of situations.

Procreate is a complicated piece of software- at least for beginners.

Procreate is a complicated piece of software behind the scenes, despite the fact that its user interface makes it seem to be simple and straightforward. 

That impact is the result of the tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise that Savage Interactive has. 

Power users and experts, on the other hand, may find this concealed complexity a bit too hidden, and they are inclined to want as many alternatives as they can get as swiftly as possible. 

And although Procreate offers a wide range of capabilities, you may find yourself wasting time going through menus or fiddling with settings when you should be concentrating on the art and the process. 

In order to close this gap in their design, Procreate implemented the “QuickMenu” in Procreate 5 and later versions of the software.

Also Read: Is Procreate Good for Beginners? The Ultimate Beginners Guide

So, What’s it about the Quick menu in Procreate

The QuickMenu in Procreate is a radial six-button menu that can be totally customised, from the actions performed by each button to the shortcut that invokes this menu. 

You may even create many profiles and swap between them to create a more effective and efficient working process.

 If you’re using an Apple Pencil (which you should be if you’re using an iPad), you can even arrange this QuickMenu to appear with a single finger press on the screen! 

For those who prefer not to use anything that is easily misclicked, you may use just about any other emotion you can think of, such as a long-press, double-tap, three-finger swipe, or any other combination of fingers and thumbs.

 I think it’s fantastic that Savage Interactive provided so many possibilities, and that’s a big part of what makes Procreate such a fantastic tool.

The default QuickMenu is set as – New Layer, Flip Horizontally, Copy, Merge Down, Clear Layer, and Flip Vertically.  In order to To alter these actions, just tap & hold one of the buttons and you’ll see a dropdown panel appear giving you all the actions to choose from.

Enabling the QuickMenu function

The first step is to learn how to enable the QuickMenu function, as well as how to turn it off if, after everything is said and done, you decide you don’t like it. 

This instruction is written for users who like to use the app in landscape mode, and certain steps may differ somewhat if you prefer to use the app in portrait mode.

• When you first start the app, be sure to open any projects you’ve been working on. Create a new blank project if you haven’t already done so by opening one of the sample artworks or by just starting from scratch.
• To access the “Actions” menu inside the newly opened project, choose the wrench symbol in the top-left corner, directly next to the “Gallery” text, and then press “Enter.” Double-check to see that the “Preferences” tab is active, which should be located on the second row from the right, near to “Help.”
• Select “Gesture controls” from the second set of choices, which is located just below the “Edit Pressure Curve” option.
• Tap on “QuickMenu” in the sidebar menu on the left side of the screen, which should be the middle choice and the sixth option regardless of whether you are counting from the top or the bottom of the screen.
• Now that the QuickMenu settings page has been opened, you may configure the menu to launch in a variety of ways as you see fit. Experiment with several options to determine which one best matches your workflow!

Activating & Customizing the Quick Menu

We can now proceed with modifying our QuickMenu as we see fit. Make every effort to make things as natural and systematic as possible, since this will aid in your efficiency as you get used to the QuickMenu interface.

• Activate the QuickMenu by selecting one or more of the options you specified during the previous procedure when we activated the functionality.
• With regard to the user interface, the center button serves as a category/label for your QuickMenu presets, while the six buttons around the central button are all assignable to different actions. 
• To activate the center button, press it.
• You should see a “QuickMenu” panel open up with your default setting and a “+” symbol on the top-right of the screen. It is possible to alter the names of the presets by touching on each one, and you can also add new presets by hitting the Plus symbol. Simply swipe to the left to remove any of them.
• To assign actions to the six buttons available for each preset, just touch and hold on any of the buttons for a few seconds until a “Set Action” option appears on the screen. Select any action from the drop-down menu to associate it with that button.
• If you use the same brushes and/or colors over and over again, I suggest creating many presets, one for each brush and/or color, and adjusting the presets more or less depending on your workflow and habits.

Customize Quick menu

Use the six QuickMenu buttons to quickly access your favorite tools.

QuickMenu comes with the following choices by default:

• Add a New Layer
• Flip it Horizontally
• Copy it
• Merge Down
• Clear the Layer
• Flip it Vertically 

You may assign any of these buttons to the Procreate functions that you need the most. Invoke QuickMenu and hold down the button you wish to modify. After a little time, the Set Action option will appear. Scroll through the choices and choose the one you want.

Your custom button settings will be saved by Procreate.

Use Quick menu:

QuickMenu may be accessed by tapping the screen, or by dragging your finger over the screen to choose the feature you need in an instant.

With Touch, you may access the radial menu with a single finger touch if you want to call QuickMenu. It will stay open until you pick an option by tapping a button on the screen.

Try a touch-drag motion for a speedier result when using Touch: when you tap, keep your finger held down and drag in the direction of the desired button, then release your finger to choose the button.

Following a period of being acquainted with the placement of each button in your radial QuickMenu, you will be able to execute this touch-drag action with such speed that it will become a simple muscle-memory flick in the appropriate direction to activate the choice you want.

The QuickMenu is a very useful feature that should not be taken for granted. I’m certain that using QuickMenu instead of fumbling through large, complex menus and listings has saved me more than 10 hours in total. 

The creation of a “default” profile, on the other hand, is critical. Because the QuickMenu always returns to the menu that the user last left it on, having a generic “default” menu that contains your most frequently used activities may be quite beneficial.

Also Read:

Does Procreate Need the Internet or WiFi?

Is Procreate Good for Beginners? The Ultimate Beginners Guide

My preferred method of using Procreate QuickMenu

Anyone who has visited my blog before will be aware that I do portraits on iPad using Procreate.

My main strategy for doing this is employing repetition and practice guides to develop muscle memory for the strokes and letterforms in order to improve the drawing speed.

During the shading and final likeness stages of any Portrait drawing, there is a final step that, which is to straighten the beveled ends on the downstrokes, bringing the style more in line with classic  drawing strokes

This necessitates frequent switching between the brush and the eraser tool, which is where QuickMenu comes in handy!

As a result, I make sure that the brush and the eraser tool are both available as fast menu buttons – the top button is the brush, and the left button is the eraser tool.

The absence of the artist’s hand, which is often seen as a mark of brilliance, is another major critique of digital art often levelled by members of the fine art community. Because there is no original, this complaint is particularly prevalent.

How to Use Procreate Quick Menu for Faster Art-A Quick Guide

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