Procreate color: palettes, fills and profiles

Choose the color task first

Find colors that work together

Choose colors in the Color Panel and save a palette for the drawing. Harmony can suggest relationships; the finished image still needs your judgment.

Use colors from a photograph

Create a palette from the image. This extracts colors from a reference; it is different from importing a ready-made palette file.

Fill an enclosed area

Use ColorDrop and inspect the boundary if the fill leaks or stops short. Decide whether the color should share the linework's layer.

Shade inside a shape

Choose the appropriate mask in the layers hub. A paint boundary and a color choice are separate decisions.

Prepare work for a screen or printer

Check the delivery requirements before choosing a color space and profile. Do this while planning the canvas, not after finishing the artwork.

Save a palette you can use again

Procreate's Color Panel offers Disc, Classic, Harmony, Value and Palettes. They give you different ways to choose and retain color. You do not need to use every view for one drawing.

I would begin with a few colors that have clear jobs in the image, such as a background and a contrasting subject. Save the colors you actually choose, rather than filling a palette with options you do not need. The Palettes handbook explains how to save the current color in an empty slot of the default palette.

For a photograph, New from File or New from Photos creates a palette from the image. Importing a .swatches file instead brings in an existing palette.

If you need a starting relationship between hues, Harmony offers color schemes based on color theory. Treat a suggested scheme as a starting point. It does not establish whether lettering has enough contrast or whether your subject stands out from its background.

Control where a fill goes

ColorDrop starts by dragging Active Color into the artwork. To change its Threshold, keep holding the drop, then slide left to lower the percentage or right to raise it. There is no useful universal percentage: the boundary and the intended area determine the adjustment.

When a fill escapes, inspect the outline and the layer receiving the color before repeatedly raising the threshold. A different layer arrangement may be needed if you want to keep the inks untouched. Procreate recommends combining ColorDrop with a Reference layer so the fill can follow the linework while the color stays separate.

For shading that should remain editable on its own layer, return to the clipping-mask choice in the mask comparison. Filling a region and constraining later brushstrokes are related, but they are not interchangeable operations.

Choose the color space for the destination

RGB suits screen artwork. For print, ask the provider which color space and profile it accepts before assuming that every job requires CMYK. Procreate's Profiles handbook describes RGB and CMYK choices for a custom canvas.

The important limit is that Procreate cannot switch an existing canvas from RGB to CMYK, or the reverse. Changing a profile stays within the canvas's chosen color space. I would settle that delivery requirement before investing in a finished piece; changing the palette later does not solve a color-space mismatch.

Color is only part of the delivery specification. Continue to the canvas and export hub for pixel dimensions, physical print size and the difference between an editable file and a delivery image.