Procreate vs Hockney AR
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Procreate
This app provides a comprehensive digital art studio for iPad, offering tools for sketching, painting, illustration, and animation. It features a vast brush library, advanced layering, color management, and precision design tools for creative professionals and aspiring artists.
- Hundreds of handmade brushes
- Advanced layer system
- High resolution canvases
- 3D Painting with Lighting Studio
- Frame-by-frame animation
- Precision design tools
- Continuous auto-save
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Loved by creative professionals and aspiring artists alike, Procreate is the leading creative application made for iPad. Procreate has everything you need to create expressive sketches, rich paintings, gorgeous illustrations, and beautiful animations. Offering 100s of handmade brushes, a suite of industry-leading artistic tools, an advanced layer system, and the powerful Valkyrie graphics engine. It’s a complete art studio you can take anywhere. Highlights: - High resolution canvases — up to 16k by 8k on compatible iPad Pros - Beautifully intuitive interface made for iPad and Apple Pencil - Revolutionary QuickShape feature for perfect shapes - Smooth and responsive smudge sampling - 3D Painting with Lighting Studio, exportable as models, images, or animations - Powered by Valkyrie, the lightning-fast 64-bit painting engine - Speed up your workflow with keyboard shortcuts - Create art in stunning 64-bit color - Continuous auto-save — never lose work again Breakthrough brushes: - Packed with hundreds of beautifully crafted brushes - Organize your brushes into sets and libraries - Add Metallic and Roughness for painting in 3D - Brush Studio — with over 100 customizable settings - Import and export custom Procreate brushes - Import Adobe® Photoshop® brushes, and run them faster than Photoshop® Full-featured layering system: - Layer your art for precise control over details and composition - Create Layer Masks and Clipping Masks for non-destructive editing - Stay organized by combining layers into Groups - Select multiple layers to move or Transform objects simultaneously - Access over 25 layer blend modes for industry-grade compositing Color without compromise: - Fill your line work with ColorDrop and SwatchDrop - Disc, Classic, Harmony, Value, and Palette color panels - Import color profiles for color matching - Assign Color Dynamics to any brush Precision design tools: - Add vector text to your illustrations - Easily import all your favorite fonts - Crop and resize your canvas for perfect composition - Perspective, Isometric, 2D, and Symmetry visual guides - Drawing Assist perfects your strokes in real time - StreamLine and stabilization smooths strokes for beautiful calligraphy and expert inking - Use Scribble to name layers, change settings, and create text Accessibility features: - Advanced stroke stabilization - Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, and Feedback Sounds - Assignable single-touch gestures - Color naming Animation and Page Assist - Easy frame-by-frame animation with customizable onion skinning - Create storyboards, GIFs, animatics, and simple animations - Sketch page-by-page concepts or begin a comic with Page Assist - Import, edit, and share PDFs Dramatic finishing effects: - Brush in image adjustments and effects with Apple Pencil - Glitch, Chromatic Aberration, Bloom, Noise, and Halftone add new dimensions to your work - Gaussian, Motion, and Perspective Blur filters create depth and movement - Powerful image adjustments including Color Balance, Curves, HSB, and Gradient Map - Bring your art to life with the fun, intuitive, and creative Warp, Symmetry, and Liquify Dynamics Time-lapse replay - Relive your creative journey with Procreate’s Time-lapse Replay - Export your Time-lapse recording in 4K for high-quality video production - Share a shorter 30-second Time-lapse on your socials Import assets and share your creations: - Import or export your art as Adobe® Photoshop® PSD files - Import Adobe® ASE and ACO Color Palettes - Import image files such as JPG, PNG, and TIFF - Export your working files in layered .procreate or PSD file formats - Share your art as TIFF, transparent PNG, multi-page PDF, web-ready JPEG, OBJ, USDZ, and animated GIFs, PNGs, and MP4s
Hockney AR
Experience David Hockney's iPad paintings come alive through augmented reality. Explore selected works from his "The Arrival of Spring" series, featured in the Royal Academy of Art's 2021 exhibition.
- Augmented Reality experience
- View iPad paintings
- Explore "The Arrival of Spring" series
- Features Royal Academy exhibition works
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Watch David Hockney's iPad paintings spring to life in Augmented Reality. Featuring selected works from his recent series, "The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020", now on view in the Royal Academy of Art's 2021 exhibition and catalogue.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Hockney AR at Free against Procreate's $12.99. Hockney AR also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.4) and device support (3 vs 1). Procreate's advantage is ratings volume (51K vs 4) and chart position (#89 vs unranked). On review sentiment, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Hockney AR is free to download; Procreate costs $12.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Hockney AR holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Procreate has 51K ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 70% of Procreate's written reviews are positive against 67% of Hockney AR's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Procreate ships an update every 2 weeks, Hockney AR weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 25, 2026 and September 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Procreate | Hockney AR |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $12.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.4 (51K ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 69.7% of reviews — better | 66.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 51K — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #89 — better | — |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.3 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1.1 GB | 92 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Savage Interactive Pty Ltd | David Hockney, Inc |
Customer experience
Procreate
Hockney AR
Bugs and requests
Procreate
Reported bugs
3 issues- Random freezing and crashes, especially after recent updates
- Issues with the fill bucket tool not working as expected
- Problems with exporting animations and preserving the animation quality
Requested features
4 requests- Implement a proper stroke stabilizer and shape tools
- Add the ability to import audio and sync animations to audio
- Improve the fill bucket tool to work across layers
- Introduce a folder system for better organization of artworks
Hockney AR
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Procreate
No in-app purchases
Hockney AR
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Procreate free?
Is Hockney AR free?
Which has better reviews, Procreate or Hockney AR?
Do Procreate or Hockney AR have ads?
Which is updated more often, Procreate or Hockney AR?
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