Have you ever tried to move something around on your Procreate canvas only to find that it wasn’t moving as accurately as you would like it to?
When you’re deep in your workflow, it can be annoying to move objects without precision. I’m going to walk you through how to use Object Snapping and Magnetics to work more efficiently in Procreate!
Get oriented with guidelines
Orange guidelines mean your object selected is in the center of your canvas. If you drag your image and you see the orange line both horizontally and vertically, that means you have lined up your image in the center point of your canvas.
Blue guidelines are just general guides concerning other objects on your canvas. To line up objects to one another, the guidelines will be seen as blue.
Use snapping to align objects with one another
Snapping allows you to easily align objects with another item on your canvas. With Snapping turned on, the blue guideline shows where specific points may be in your canvas.
Your object will also snap to other items on different layers, and show you guides in relation to that piece. This can be very helpful if you need to center an object under another item on a different layer.
To turn on Snappping, tap the cursor icon at the top toolbar. Select Snapping (with the thunderbolt icon), and in the menu that pops up, make sure the Snapping toggle is also turned on.
In this menu, you will notice more settings like Distance and Velocity. We’ll go over these later, but for now, make sure they are set at least around halfway otherwise Snapping will not work.
After Snapping is selected, try moving an object around to align it with another item on your canvas.
FYI: You can only select Snapping in either Freeform, Uniform, or Distort. The Warp setting will not let you move your object around.
Use magnetics to align and rotate around angles
Magnetics works similarly to snapping, except as you move your objects around the canvas, it aligns with different degrees of angles.
Having Magnetics toggled on also allows you to rotate items with a more precise degree of rotation.
Use Distance and Velocity to adjust how freely objects Snap
Distance indicates how far your object is in pixels from the nearest guide. For example, if you leave it at “0”, your object will freely move around and only “activate” Snapping when it is near a guide. Let’s start increasing this to see its effects! When you have it set to the max which is “50”, it will snap onto any nearby guide from a 50px measurement.
Velocity controls the speed at which your object moves before it triggers snapping to the guide.
Tip: If you have Distance and Velocity set to 0, Snapping will not work as you move your object around your canvas. However, if you have just Snapping and Magnetics toggled on, you can still move your object around the canvas, and the various degrees of angles on the guidelines will show up.
I hope you found these tips helpful! No more guessing if you aligned something properly!
