How to Recolor in Procreate

You can change the mood or feeling of a drawing simply by changing the colors. In this tutorial, we'll go over the different tools you can use to recolor your drawings.

To create the designs in this tutorial, we drew hearts and filled them in usinganimal print brushes from VectorStore on Design Bundles, but there are a ton of other great Procreate brushes you can pick from.

Procreate Recolor Mode

The simplest way to recolor a drawing is by dragging and dropping colors. We talked about dragging and dropping colors in our tutorial on how to fill shapes in Procreate, but this process can also be used to recolor drawings.

After you color drop andadjust the ColorDrop Threshold, tap the Continue filling with Recolor button at the top to access the Recolor mode. In Recolor mode, you can replace colors in your drawing with the active color.

Once Recolor mode is active, a crosshair will appear on the canvas. Drag the crosshair to where you want to change the color. What you see is a live preview until you apply the changes, so try dragging the crosshair around to see how Recolor affects your drawing. You can also change the active color at any time.

Use the Flood slider at the bottom to adjust how much color bleeds over into similar shades. See the following image for a comparison between 0% (none), 50%, and 100% (max) flood.

To commit changes, tap the canvas. Thenyou can continue in Recolor mode to change colors in other areas.

Recolor by Adjusting Hue, Saturation, and Brightness

Huechanges the colors. Saturation will make the colors more gray or more vibrant. Brightness will darken or lighten the colors.

Step 1 - Open Hue, Saturation, Brightness Interface

Select the layer you want to recolor in the Layers panel. Open the Adjustments panel. Tap Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and choose Layer.

Step 2 - Adjust Hue, Saturation, and Brightness Sliders

Move the sliders left or right to adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness.

Tap the Adjustmentsbutton again to commit the changes, or tap the canvas with a finger to open theAdjustment Actions.Tapping the Adjustments button will close Adjustments.

The Adjustment Actions are:

- Apply - Apply the changes and keep Adjustments open.

- Undo -Undo the last edit in Adjustments.

- Preview -Tap and hold to view the original design without the Adjustment changes.

- Cancel -Cancel all Adjustment changes and close Adjustments.

- Reset -Reset Adjustments made so far and keep Adjustments open.

Recolor Drawing Using Color Balance

Step 1 - Open Color Balance Interface

Select the layer you want to recolor in the Layers panel. Open the Adjustments panel. Tap Color Balance, and choose Layer.

Step 2 - Adjust Color Balance Sliders

The three color balance sliders are cyan and red, magenta and green, and yellow and blue. They're paired in this way because the colors are opposites of each other. The sliders can be adjusted for shadows, midtones, and highlights.

Tap the sun button to the right of the sliders to pickShadows, Midtones, or Highlights. Then adjust the color balance sliders.

Tap theAdjustmentsbutton again to commit the changes,or tap the canvas with a finger to open theAdjustment Actions.

Recolor By Adjusting the Curves

Curves in Procreate can seem a little intimidating and difficult to understand, but once you get the hang of it, it's a great tool for recoloring and color correcting.

Open Curves Interface

Select the layer you want to recolor in the Layers panel.Open the Adjustments panel. Tap Curves, and choose Layer.

All About the Curves Tool

The right area of the graph affects the highlights, the middle area affects the midtones, and the left area affects the shadows.

The curve starts with two nodes, but you can add more by tapping on the curve. Move the nodes around as needed. To delete an existing node, tap the node, and then tap delete.

Adjusting gammais like adjusting red, green, and blue all at the same time. With gamma selected, dragging a node up will make the layer lighter. Dragging a node down will make the layer darker. Moving a node left or right will change the contrast of the layer. See the following image for a better understanding.

Select Red, Green, or Blue to the right of the graph to adjust them individually.Like the color balance tool, opposite colors are paired together for the curves tool.

With Red selected, if you move a node up, the drawing becomes redder. The drawing will become more cyan if a node is moved down.

With Green selected, if you move a node up, the drawing becomes greener. The drawing will become more magenta if a node is moved down.

With Blue selected, if you move a node up, the drawing becomes bluer. The drawing will become more yellow if a node is moved down.

Tap theAdjustmentsbutton again to commit the changes, or tap the canvas with a finger to open theAdjustment Actions.

As you can see, the curves tool is very powerful. It's basically the hue, saturation, brightness tool and color balance tool all in one.

Recolor Drawing Using Gradient Map

The Gradient Map tool also looks at the highlights, midtones, and shadows and maps those to the colors in the selected gradient map. We have an excellent guide on using the gradient map toolto learn more.