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Procreate Pocket 2: huge upgrade to our favorite painting app

Procreate is an incredible painting app for iOS, but until now its iPhone and iPad versions weren’t exactly created equal.

We reviewed both apps after a huge update last year, giving Procreate 4 for iPad a full five-star rating while lamenting that Procreate Pocket needs to play catch-up. Well, that day has finally come as many of the best features from the iPad version have arrived on iPhone.

Of course, if you have the choice we’d still recommend the iPad for digital painting – its a much bigger canvas to work with, for starters, and compatible with the Apple Pencil. This update to Procreate Pocket, though, makes it much more feasible to create serious artwork on an iPhone.

Read more: 4 pro tips to improve your illustrations

So what’s new? We’ll let the developers explain: “Featuring a beautiful new interface designed for iPhone X and iOS 11, 136 hand-made brushes, huge canvases of up to 8K, and an advanced layer system, Procreate Pocket 2 is an entirely new app, powered by the same industry-leading graphics engine that powers Procreate for iPad: Silica-M.”

You can make some incredible artwork entirely on your iPhone. This one is by Stephanie Fizer Coleman

There are also a couple new features that even the iPad version doesn’t yet have: the ability to import and export custom brush sets, and a new 30-second time-lapse feature that saves a sped-up recording of your painting process to the Photos app, perfect for sharing on social media.

In short, if you’ve got the itch to get creative on your iPhone, you won’t find much better on the App Store than Procreate Pocket 2. It’s a free update for anyone who owned the previous version, or $5/£5 if you’re purchasing for the first time.

Get Procreate Pocket