I blur portions of my drawings all the time on Procreate. What do I use? I use Gaussian blur the most, even though there are 2 other types of blurs. Blurring is extremely helpful, which is why I’m going to show you how to quickly and easily use Gaussian blur to blur your drawings on Procreate.
First of all, there are 3 types of blurs in Procreate. The first is Gaussian blur. I think of ‘Gaussian blur’ as a blur that brings things out of focus.
The other two blurs are ‘Motion Blur’ and ‘Perspective Blur’. These blurs help add motion and perspective to your drawing. I won’t get into these blurs in this blog post.
Let’s get into how to blur on Procreate. First, we need to find ‘Gaussian blur’. You can find it in Adjustments. Adjustments looks like a wand and is located in the top left corner. ‘Gaussian blur’ is the first of the three blur options on the Adjustments’ menu.
After activating ‘Gaussian Blur’, look for the little bar that will have dropped down. It will be towards the top of the screen. It should say ‘Gaussian Blur’. On this bar should be a little triangle. Click this triangle; two options will appear. These options are ‘Layer’ and ‘Pencil’. ‘Layer’ means that the blur will be applied to the current layer. ‘Pencil’ means that whatever sections of the layer you touch with your Apple Pencil or Stylus Pen (it can’t be your finger) the blur will apply to. Before you switch to ‘Pencil’, make sure you’re on the brush tool and not the smudge or eraser tool. When you choose ‘Pencil’, little stars will appear around the brush tool. Tip: If you choose ‘Pencil’, you can still access the brush library and change your brush. Changing the brush allows you to create unique blurs because of the many different brushes and their shapes and qualities.
Now we need to decide how extreme we want the blur to be. Put your finger on the screen and drag it to your right. You’ll see a blue line appear towards the top of the screen. This line tells you how much Gaussian Blur there will be. The closer it is to the right side, the more blur there will be. Just above this line you’ll also see there is a percentage. This percentage has the same purpose as the blue line; it tells you how much Gaussian Blur there will be. Note: when you turn ‘Gaussian Blur’ on, it starts out as 0%.
If you chose the ‘Layer’ option earlier, no blur will show until you choose how much Gaussian Blur there will be. The blur will show up as you choose how much Gaussian blur you want. It will also update live as you change the amount of blur. If you chose the ‘Pencil’ option, the ‘Gaussian Blur’ amount should have gone to 60% automatically. Then you can draw over the areas you want to blur. If the blur is too strong, you can always adjust it.
If you tap the screen while on ‘Gaussian Blur’, a little menu will come up called ‘Adjustments Actions’. You can hit cancel, reset, undo, preview and apply. Cancel, reset and undo are self explanatory. Preview allows you to see what the blurred contents looked like before you blurred it.
Apply saves the blur, but you stay on ‘Gaussian Blur’. Note that after you hit apply, you can’t bring up this menu and click cancel, reset or undo and expect something to happen. Once you hit apply, you stay on ‘Gaussian Blur’ and start a new blur automatically. Cancel, reset and undo apply to this new blur now. You can still undo the old blur though if you save the blur, click out of ‘Gaussian Blur’ and click the undo arrow on the left side of the screen.
To click out of ‘Gaussian Blur’ and save the blur, click the adjustments button.
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