14
Sketchbooking with Page Assist
While most users are familiar with using digital painting software one canvas at a time, Procreate offers a special feature that allows you to work on several canvases at once, like the pages of a sketchbook. This feature, called Page Assist, was rolled out with the latest Procreate 5.2 update.
Page Assist helps you create several frames in a single canvas and work on each as a separate page. You can edit and organize the pages of a document, or simply use Procreate as a sketchbook that you can skim through.
We’re going to cover the following broad topics here:
- Using the Page Assist interface
- Adjusting pages using Page options
By the end of this chapter, you will know how to use Page Assist to work on several pages in one canvas.
Using the Page Assist interface
To start working with pages on Procreate, you must first activate Page Assist.
Page Assist can be toggled on and off using the Canvas tab of the Actions menu (the wrench-shaped icon at the top left-hand corner of the screen). To turn it on, follow these steps:
- Tap the wrench icon to open the Actions menu popover and select the Canvas option, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 14.1: Canvas tab
- Toggle on the Page Assist option. A timeline will appear at the bottom of the screen. This timeline houses frames corresponding to each page, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 14.2: Page Assist interface
This will activate Page Assist on your canvas.
Important Note
Each layer is treated as a separate page. The layers on the bottom appear first on the timeline. If you want to have several elements on one page, group them into a layer group. Each layer group is treated as a separate page.
In the following sub-section, we’ll go over the basics of how the Page Assist interface works.
Page Assist interface
The interface of the Page Assist screen has the following elements:
- Canvas: When Page Assist is on, the canvas shows only the currently selected page. This refers to the contents of the selected layer or layer group. This is unlike the regular illustration canvas, which shows all the visible layers.
- Timeline: The timeline houses the pages of your sketchbook or document in order. The primary page, or the one you are working on, is indicated by a blue line underneath it. Tap on any page to jump to it and draw on it. You may reorder the pages on your timeline by holding and dragging them to the desired position. You may also reorder pages directly from the Layers panel.
When the visibility of a layer or group is turned off, its respective page also disappears from the timeline.
- New Page: This button is placed at the top-right corner of the Page Assist toolbar. It adds a page right after your primary page. Every page gets added as a new layer.
- Page options: Tap on any page to bring up page-specific options, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 14.3: Page options
We will learn more about them further ahead in this chapter.
Important Note
Page Assist allows you to import PDF files into Procreate. When a PDF document is imported into the Procreate Gallery, the resulting canvas turns on Page Assist automatically. The pages of the document, in order, make up the pages on the timeline, until the layer limit is reached. This feature allows you to conveniently import and sign documents or fill in forms on Procreate.
Now that you are familiar with the Page Assist interface, let us look more closely at the options available for pages.
Adjusting pages using Page options
Page options provides certain settings that can be applied to each page individually, without affecting the others. To bring up this popup, tap on the page you want to edit, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 14.4: Page options
Let’s take a closer look at these options:
- Duplicate: This option creates a duplicate of the page after it. It creates a fresh new page on a new layer/group. This layer or group can be edited independently of the original one.
- Delete: This option deletes the page.
- Background: The leftmost page, corresponding to the lowest layer/group of the canvas, can be set as the background page. This means that the contents of that page will consistently appear as a background behind all the other pages. The Page options popup for only this page has a toggle labeled Background, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 14.5: Background toggle
Once a page has been chosen as the background, it can’t be moved from the leftmost spot on the timeline. The layer position is likewise locked to the bottom. No other pages can be moved past it to the left, unless Background is toggled off. There can’t be multiple background pages. You may, however, choose to have multiple objects in the background, by grouping those layers into a single page.
Important Note
The Background feature is useful for several cases. For instance, you may use it when you want a footnote or watermark to appear on all pages of a document, or to set a paper or notebook texture underneath to give your pages a traditional feel.
In this section, we learned about the options used to edit pages and give them a specific Background role.
With this, we have covered all the features of Page Assist. We can now summarize this chapter.
Summary
In this chapter, we talked about Page Assist, a useful tool in Procreate that helps you work on several pages within a single canvas. You learned about the uses of this tool in importing and editing documents, as well as creating multi-page artworks such as sketchbooks and comics.
You learned how to activate Page Assist on a canvas, as well as how to import PDF documents directly into Procreate. We also discussed the interface of Page Assist, which allows you to sequentially arrange your pages, and edit each of them independently. With Page options, this chapter introduced page-specific settings that let you duplicate and delete pages, or set a page as the background.
By now, you should be familiar with the features of Page Assist and be able to use it to create your own digital sketchbook.