Stage and Canvas

The Stage area is in the top half of your screen when you first open a movie. This is the viewport for your movie project, and where you make spatial adjustments to your content in Compose mode.

Anything visible on the Stage will be visible on the final export of your project. You can increase or decrease the Stage area in relation to the Timeline by tapping and holding on the middle toolbar, then dragging up or down.

The Stage has three main parts:

1. Stage

2. Backstage

3. Timecode and Undo/Redo

The Backstage is the area that sits outside of the Stage.

Backstage allows you to create content larger than the Stage, and animate content on and off the Stage as desired. This includes any backgrounds and foreground elements, objects, and characters not always required on the Stage.

The timecode displays the current time for the Playhead's location on your Timeline, broken down into hours:minutes:seconds:frame number.

Your Undo (left) and Redo (right) buttons. Use these to revert or repeat your actions.

Canvas - Draw & Paint

When in Draw & Paint mode, accessible when creating or editing a Drawing or Flipbook , you will be moved to a canvas* where you can sketch, draw, and paint. A top bar and sidebar will appear with many of the tools also found in Procreate.

Sketch and paint with hundreds of versatile brushes. Access hundreds of Procreate brushes and add your favorite custom ones to your Brush Library.

Blend and mix colors using any brush in your library to achieve a range of effects.

Erase mistakes and make fine adjustments with any brush in your Brush Library.

Paint overlapping objects without altering or painting over work you've already done. Layers let you edit and delete individual elements in your artwork.

Select, adjust, and harmonize color as you create. Use various interface options to suit your workflow or drag and drop color into your art using ColorDrop.

Drag this slider up to increase the size of your brush or make it smaller by dragging down.

Tap anywhere along the slider to jump to that point for bigger adjustments.

Make finer adjustments by holding the slider and dragging your finger sideways. Without lifting your finger, drag up or down. The slider will now move in smaller increments.

To increase or decrease brush opacity from transparent to solid, drag the bottom slider up or down.

Change opacity more accurately by holding the slider and dragging your finger sideways. Without lifting your finger, drag up or down. The slider will now move in smaller increments.

The Undo and Redo buttons allow you to take back (Undo) and repeat (Redo) your recent actions. Tap once to affect one action, tap repeatedly to affect multiple, and hold it to rapidly affect multiple actions.

Undo is the uppermost arrow facing left, and Redo is below it, facing right.

Access settings and tools specific to this Flipbook or Drawing. A brief overview is below, but check the Draw & Paint settings section for more details.

1. Add - insert photos and files into your image or animation

2. Canvas - change working area size and properties for this image or animation

3. Canvas - resize your working area, show or hide keyframe effects, solo flipbook and change the visibility of the Selection mask

4. Onions - turn onion skins on and off, and customize their look and feel

5. Prefs - adjust settings for pencil and gestural input related to using the Paint tools. Also, adjust interface elements like the sidebar and the brush cursor

Access visual filters to apply to your images and animations in the Flipbook. These filters are applied as soon as you exit the mode, so keep this in mind as you use them.

1. Hue, Saturation, Brightness - Adjust the hue, saturation and brightness of your content

2. Lens Blur - apply a lens blur to the content that simulates a camera blur

3. Gaussian Blur - apply a blur to the content using the Gaussian technique

4. Noise - apply various noise-producing filters to the content

5. Sharpen - sharpen and soften your content

Access tools to select and isolate parts of your artwork:

1. Automatic - select areas of content with similar color. Tap and hold on a color, then drag right to increase the range of the selection, and drag left to make it more precise

2. Freehand - select an area using a lasso-style tyle, or use a series of taps to create a polygonal selection

3. Rectangle - select a rectangular area. While selecting, hold another finger down to snap the rectangle into a perfect square

4. Ellipse - select an elliptical area of your artwork. While selecting, hold another finger down to snap the ellipse into a perfect circle

Access the Transform tool, which allows you to modify the position, scale, and shape of your content:

1. Uniform - scale your content in at the same ratio

2. Freeform - scale and stretch your content without locking the ratio

3. Distort - skew and shear your content

4. Warp - stretch out parts of your content based on a warp grid

Without the Timeline, the Stage becomes a full-screen canvas with more room to focus on sketching, drawing, and painting. Drag the handle icon in the center of the Timeline up or down to hide the Timeline and activate Flipbook. Access and add tracks, modify content in batches and adjust opacity and blend mode of tracks.

Tap the title (Flipbook or Drawing) in the top left, then tap Finish Flipbook or Drawing to exit.

In here, you can head to our Help Center (where you currently are), or submit a brush upgrade error report if you have any trouble.

Don't forget to check out the Draw & Paint settings section for more details about the options available in the Draw & Paint menu bar, available when creating or editing a Drawing or Flipbook.