13 Best Procreate Alternatives for Windows 10

If you do a survey and ask multiple graphic designers what their favorite device is for graphic designs, one of the popular devices that will spring up is the iPad Pro. The reason is that it supports Procreate, one of the best graphic editor and digital painting applications in the market.

With Procreate, users can create illustrations and drawings that look like it was hand-drawn. Although Procreate was an amazing tool for graphic designers, it is only available for iPad users, not even Mac users!

If you own a Windows or Android device and you want to use the Procreate app, you have to first buy the iPad Pro to use it. This solution is costly, especially when you do not want to commit to spending on another device.

A better alternative is to explore Procreate alternatives for your Windows operating system. If you are looking for a brilliant graphic editor and digital painting application that is similar to Procreate for Windows, you are in the right place.

In this article, you will learn about 13 of the best Procreate alternatives for Windows 10.

Let’s get started.

Top Procreate Alternatives for Windows 10

1. Autodesk Sketchbook

Best Procreate Alternative with Powerful Features And Functionality

Created for desktop, mobile, and tablet devices, Autodesk Sketchbook proves to be your best choice in creating drawings, artworks, and illustrations with a feel of realism. This drawing software presents you with a clean interface as well as realistic brushes and pens that behave like their physical counterparts.

Autodesk Sketchbook comes with a host of professional features and tools placed at your disposal. Alongside a wide variety of highly customizable brushes, you have access to guides, rulers, and stroke tools that give you both stylistic freedom and precision.

These brushes are hundreds in number and include pencils, markers, airbrushes, paint, and smear brushes, among a lot of others.

This software’s intuitive user interface provides essential professional features like layers and blend modes. You also enjoy layers and color fill tools with which you apply a variety of techniques to color your work, including dynamic linear and radial gradients.

Autodesk Sketchbook also provides you with traditional rulers, curved rulers, ellipses, and French curve tools as well as a predictive stroke tool to draw perfectly smooth strokes.

Some other features and tools offered by Autodesk Sketchbook include vertical, horizontal, and radial symmetry tools. These tools help you easily mirror your pen strokes for the creation of intricate designs and pressure-sensitive strokes and tilts.

Pricing

Autodesk Sketchbook costs $19.99 to download on Windows 10.

2. Krita

Best Open-Source Procreate Alternative with Extended Customization Options

Krita is a professional open source painting program dedicated to concept artists, texture and matte painters, illustrators, and comic designers.

This Procreate alternative presents you with an intuitive user interface where you customize the dockers and panels to create the specific workflow that suits your design needs. Once you have it set up, you save it as your own workspace. You also have the option to create shortcuts for your commonly used tools.

Alongside this customizable layout option, Krita also offers you over 30 dockers for additional functionality and dark and light color themes. Users also enjoy access to over 100 professionally-made brushes supported by brush stabilizers, and built-in vector tools that help you create comic panels.

You enjoy 9 unique drawing assistants that help you with vanishing points, straight lines, ellipses, and curvilinear perspectives.

Krita does not stop there. You also get access to layer management options, full-color management options, Direct3D 11 in place of OpenGL via the ANGLE compatibility layer, PSD support, Python scripts, and HDR painting options.

Pricing

Krita is available to download for free.

3. Adobe Illustrator

Best Procreate Alternative For Creating Vector Graphic Illustrations

One of the more familiar names on this list, Adobe Illustrator is an industry-standard vector graphics software with both desktop, web, and mobile compatibility. It offers you a chance to easily create logos, icons, book illustrations, product packaging, and billboards, among a lot of others.

Adobe Illustrator gives you the capability to create new variations of texts with outline text and variable fonts. You transform type in monograms, wordmarks, and more, enjoy text on path options and get to choose from over 18,000 fonts from top designers.

Shapes and colors are easily transformed into logos and icons and, being vector-based, Adobe Illustrator allows you to create typography, draw freehand, and trace and recolor graphics while keeping the crispest details.

While working on your Windows desktop, you have the option of syncing your files, meaning your work is always autosaved and you pick up where you left off.

An Adobe Sensei feature also presents you with ample AI-powered capabilities. Colors are automatically extracted from a photo and added to your design. It also auto-traces a hand-drawn sketch and turns it into a vector graphic.

Adobe Illustrator additionally offers you collaborative editing, mirroring, enhanced glyph snapping, and document version tracking options, among others.

Pricing

Adobe Illustrator is available through monthly and yearly subscription plans in two pricing plans: general and Adobe Illustrator plan. The general plan gives you all Adobe applications and the Adobe Illustrator plan gives you only access to Adobe Illustrator. You also enjoy a 7-day free trial on both plans.

4. Concepts

Best Procreate Alternative with Extremely Fast And Smooth Workflows

Trusted by creators at top companies such as Disney, Apple, Nike, Playstation, and HP, Concepts is an advanced sketching paper that presents you with natural tools supported by vector manipulation capabilities.

Using its Fluid Engine, Concepts works with high-performance 120Hz displays. It gives you fast and easy design workflows and allows you to create custom brushes through its Advanced Transforms feature.

You have access to precision tools, shapes, and infinite layers, and you can export your designs as both vector and regular image formats.

A library of royalty-free professional brushes and objects is placed at your disposal and imports also come as single or multi-page PDFs.

Pricing

You get to download Concepts for free from the Microsoft store.

5. Corel Painter 2022

Best Procreate Alternative with Very Responsive Design Actions

Another popular name on the list, Corel Painter 2022 serves as a professional digital art software. It equips you with hundreds of highly realistic artist-created brushes and an array of versatile art tools to sketch, paint, illustrate and produce your unique photo art.

Corel Painter comes with a host of advanced features. For a start, you are supported with an enhanced brush accelerator feature utilizing your computer’s hardware and graphics card to deliver one of the smoothest and most responsive painting experiences among its counterparts.

You enjoy customization options through the creation of custom brushes, palettes, and workspace layouts. Also, you get to import custom content from other external platforms like Photoshop.

Brushes are modified by you in respect to size, shape, angle, and flow through the software’s in-depth brush control panels. You can pan, zoom, rotate and apply lighting and surface texture with ease and have access to multiple composition tools and color mixing options.

AI-powered auto-painting and cloning tools also allow you to seamlessly transform photos into paintings without any fuss.

Pricing

Corel Painter 2022 is available to you through three plans: a one-time purchase plan for new users, a cheaper one-time purchase plan for old users that wish to upgrade, and a yearly subscription plan.

6. Affinity Designer

Best Procreate Alternative with Extended Format Compatibility for Game Developers

Dedicated to assisting professional illustrators, web designers, and game developers, Affinity Designer is another top illustration tool to create concept art, print projects, logos, icons, UI designs, and mock-ups, among a lot of others. This tool is trusted by thousands of designers and offers you quality vector and raster design tools.

With Affinity Designer, you can pan and zoom at 60fps, have access to live gradients, transforms, effects, and adjustment options. You also enjoy other amazing features such as live pixel, retina, and wireframe views of vector artwork in and out of split-screen mode.

This Procreate alternative offers zoom features to over 1,000,000%. It seamlessly switches between tools and editing modes, offers precise vector tools, and sophisticated typography options.

Affinity Designer also provides features that make your workflow even more seamless. Alongside unlimited artboards, you have access to saveable history, customizable keyboard shortcuts, advanced grids, snapping and alignment tools, and customizable presets for your UI layout.

Supported formats include PSD, AI, PDF, EPS, SVG, JPG, TIFF, and EXR. You can save documents as template files to be used in the future.

Pricing

Affinity Designer is available to you for download after you pay a one-time purchase price from the Microsoft Store.

7. MediBang Paint

Best Procreate Alternative with Dedicated Comic Creation And Management Options

Coming through its Pro solutions for PCs, MediBang Paint is a free digital painting and comic creation software. It offers you an array of illustration features and tools you can rely on for professional purposes. Over 50 customizable brushes, including mapping pens and watercolor brushes, are provided to you so you do not run out of options in creating your designs.

MediBang Paint is optimized to run smoothly on your computer without using up a lot of resources. Like other applications, it offers you multiple layer options to make use of. Snap guides help you draw lines and curves perfectly. Comic illustrators are presented with multiple solutions including a dedicated panel for easy comic creation and comic management options.

Cloud integrations allow you to autosave and sync your customized brushes and other settings across devices. You also have access to 800 free pre-made tones and backgrounds, free fonts, and collaboration capabilities.

Pricing

MediBang Paint is free to download and use.

8. ArtRage

Best Procreate Alternative Optimized For Oil And Watercolor Paintings

From Ambient Design, a software development company based in New Zealand, ArtRage is an illustration software that offers a full range of familiar tools. These tools majorly consist of expressive oils, watercolors, multiple pencil sets, and a stack of wax crayons.

ArtRage gives you a chance to create natural color gradients and sketches through its thick oils and pencils. Watercolor strokes react to canvas texture.

You have access to natural paint mixing options and over 16 tools with multiple variations through presets and settings. These tools include natural painting tools, sketching and drawing tools, utility tools, and special effect tools. You also get to apply highlights, shadows, and 3D effects to individual layers.

Pricing

Artrage is free to download from the Microsoft store.

9. Clip Studio Paint

Best Procreate Alternative for Linework Designers

Another application designed for drawing and painting, Clip Studio Paint serves as an ideal option for illustrators who specialize in the linework. It offers you smooth lines, zero lag while drawing, and high-quality vector output.

A powerful brush engine allows you to create perfect strokes. Clip Studio Paint integrates well with your device to recognize up to 8192 levels of pen pressure where a pen-touch input is used. You have an expanding array consisting of thousands of design assets and you also get to customize brushes to create tools just how you like them.

Clip Studio Paint offers dedicated features for different types of designers. These features are dedicated to concept art and painting, character art, illustrations for structural designs, comics and manga, and animations.

Pricing

While the illustration software only comes as a one-time purchase for Windows and macOS, it is available through subscription plans for mobile devices.

These perpetual and subscription plans are split between two pricing schemes: a Clip Studio Paint Pro (dedicated to character art, concept art, illustration) and a Clip Studio Paint Ex (dedicated to manga & comics, animations).

10. Inkscape

Best Open-Source Procreate Alternative for Advanced Developers

Offering flexible drawing tools, broad file format compatibility, and powerful text tools, Inkscape serves as an appropriate alternative to be chosen by web designers.

Alongside tools for creating bezier and spiro curves, the illustration program equips you with multiple shaping tools that allow you to create perfect rectangles, ellipses, stars, polygons, and spirals, among others.

Inkscape’s text tool gives you multiline text and full on-canvas editing capabilities. You are also provided access to embedded bitmaps, cloning tools, object manipulation options, interactive “drag and drop” transformations, and Z-order operations.

This Procreate alternative comes with support for a fully anti-aliased display, SVG format file generation, and editing. It also supports exports in PNG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, sk1, PDF, EPS, and PostScript formats.

Pricing

Inkscape is open-source and available to you for free.

11. Tayasui Sketches

Best Alternative to Procreate with Unlimited Layers and Color Palettes

Another tool that comes with highly realistic tools and supporting features, Tayasui Sketches is one you can count on. Tayasui Sketches offers you a realistic watercolor brush and unlimited layers for you to create complex drawings that are easy to edit.

Acrylic brushes allow you to create realistic oil strokes and paintings and you also get access to useful gradient, color mixing, and symmetry tools. A brush editor lets you edit the opacity of your brushes. You also have the option to create and manage an unlimited number of color palettes.

Additionally, through its Cloud Sync feature, your drawings are automatically backed up and synchronized across all your devices.

Pricing

Tayasui Sketches is free to download.

12. Rebelle

Best Procreate Alternative with Hyper-Realistic Watercolor Painting Features

Rebelle is an award-winning realistic painting software that comes accompanied by realistic oils, watercolors, and other wet and dry media tools. This Procreate alternative mimics how natural media interacts with the canvas in respect to color blending, wet diffusion, and drying.

You easily create stunning oil and acrylic impasto designs. Users have access to a palette knife and dirty brush as well as multiple transparent watercolor mixing options.

Natural RYB color mixing and gamma correction feature accompany Rebelle. Its DropEngine feature realistically mimics dripping effects. An intuitive Blow tool allows you to direct drips in different directions on the canvas. You enjoy crucial brush line stabilization.

Rebelle complements all these editing tools and features with an intuitive customizable interface, multitouch gestures, custom keyboard shortcuts, and support for up to 15 different languages.

Pricing

Rebelle is available to you for free.

13. CorelDraw

Best Procreate Alternative with Multi-Level Suite Of Solutions, Advanced Integrations, and Collaboration Options

CorelDraw offers a suite of design tools and solutions dedicated to designers in different skill categories. These tools include the CorelDRAW Essentials 2021, CorelDRAW Standard 2021, and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2021.

The CorelDRAW Essentials 2021 solution is dedicated to beginners and offers a rich collection of vector illustration features. With this solution, you enjoy comprehensive object management capabilities, color, fills, and transparency options, easy bitmap to vector tracing, and support for popular formats like PNG, JPG, GIF, and HEIF.

Dedicated to home-based designers, the CorelDRAW Standard 2021 solution presents users with vector illustration, page layout, photo editing, typography editing, and web graphics creation options. It also comes with all the features offered by the CorelDRAW Essentials 2021 solution.

The CorelDRAW Graphics Suite solution offers you fully featured software accompanied by additional features like customizable workspaces, a multipage view to manage multiple projects at once, optimized image editing tools, and extended integrations and collaborative features.

Pricing

All solutions from CorelDraw are available to you through perpetual one-time purchases or annual plans. CorelDraw Graphics Suite 2021 offers a 15-day free trial.

How to Choose the Best Alternative to Procreate?

Choosing the best Procreate alternative simply means choosing an illustration software that takes care of the drawbacks of using Procreate while offering the same functionality Procreate offers. So, what are these elements to look out for?

1. Go For A Free Program

One of the downsides associated with Procreate is the price tag placed on the application. A lot of designers have become unwilling to pay for Procreate and have sought out cheaper or even free alternatives to deal with this.

Thankfully, there are a lot of competent Procreate alternatives in the market that come absolutely free and offer you the same level of functionality the software provides.

Take Krita for example. This software program offers a barrage of high-quality and dedicated features that present you with the same level of functionality offered by Procreate without you having to pay a dime to use them.

2. A Low Learning Curve Is Important

Procreate allows beginners to easily learn the basics of creating illustrations through it. However, basic knowledge of using the software program is not sufficient for creating the highly fascinating, professional-level illustrations that help you compete with the best.

Alongside the time needed to be devoted to learning these advanced features, some very useful tricks that make your experience in using the application more seamless are also not put in the open for you to see.

With these, it becomes apparent that choosing an application that offers you both an intuitive interface and a low learning curve for advanced illustration creation is best for you.

You easily apply professional-level effects and designs immediately you start making use of the program and have only your creativity to look up to.

3. Multiple Device Compatibility

Another downside you need to take care of while choosing an alternative to Procreate is its compatibility with only iPad devices. A limit like this means, to use the Procreate app, you do not need to only purchase the application from the apple store, but you also need to purchase a whole new device if you do not possess an iPad.

A lot of software applications take care of this. Like the programs mentioned on our list, an application that offers compatibility with Windows OS, macOS, iOS, and even Linux, in addition to iPadOS compatibility gives you more options.

Your creativity is not limited by or attached to the use of one device and, consequently, your workflows enjoy more flexibility and portability.

4. Functionality

Procreate is revered for the number of features and level of functionality it presents to illustrators and designers. This is the reason why it remains one of the best options in the market despite its drawbacks.

Some of these features include a wide and increasingly expanding set of customizable brushes, extremely smooth, realistic, and responsive workflows, reliable autosave options, pressure sensitivity, and multiple supported formats.

A Procreate alternative is only a great option when it offers you all these features and functionalities, and even more. For instance, Krita offers raster design options as well as extended dedicated functionality for comic designers.

Adobe Illustrator offers a very wide range of typography and vector options to choose from. These are only a few alternatives that offer more functionality in dedicated areas for creating illustrations.

Taking all these into consideration, the best alternative to Procreate is one that comes for free or at a considerably lower price and presents you with an intuitive user interface, multiple compatibility options, and a similar or advanced level of functionality.

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