Is Procreate 5.4 Worth It?
A personal review of the new update
What’s up everyone! 😁
Did you know that Procreate dropped their 5.4 update recently? They uploaded the video for it on the 17th of September (if I remember right), and of course I had to download it and give it a try. And wow, this one is all about the brushes.
The funny thing is, even the old brushes I had already bought, like my MaxPack ones, suddenly feel brand new. It’s like picking up Procreate for the very first time all over again. A fresh start. And honestly? I really like it.
They’ve added around 180 new brushes (insane, right?). Apparently, they even brought in someone who worked at Adobe before to design these. And you can tell, there’s a big focus on this new feature that lets brush strokes rotate depending on how you rotate your Apple Pencil. Not just direction, but actual barrel rotation.
Here’s the kicker though: that “barrel roll” only works with the new Apple Pencil Pro. I don’t have that. I’m still using my trusty Apple Pencil 2 on my iPad Pro M2, so some of these new brushes feel… kind of weird. I’m sure you can tweak it in settings, but me and brush settings? Not friends. There are so many sliders in there and every time I touch something, I usually end up ruining the brush instead of fixing it.
That said, they did sneak in more options in brush settings. Now you can even adjust the pencil curve for pressure on each brush (I think), kind of like how it works in Rebelle 7 Pro. That’s pretty cool.
The color panel also got a revamp, though honestly, I don’t see much difference. Maybe you do.
And then there’s iCloud integration, when you first open after updating, Procreate asks if you want to store your brushes on iCloud or on the iPad. I chose the iPad (I’ve got 1TB, so why not?). But I can see why some people would go with iCloud, backups everywhere you go.
That’s pretty much the highlight reel of this update. Honestly, I was secretly hoping for group opacity controls or more performance upgrades, like optimizing older iPads for more layers. But no, this one is 100% brush-focused.
To test things out, I created a new artwork of a dragon fishing a orca using only the new default brushes. Some of them I really liked. Others… not so much. If I’m being real, a lot of them feel very similar, different names, slightly different textures, but basically the same effect. And I hate those multiply-style brushes where one stroke just keeps building darker and darker. Guess what? There are a lot of those in this set.
Also, I couldn’t find any of the classic texture brushes, like rain or water effects. Those lived in the old sets, and it’s kind of sad they focused on texture variations instead of keeping those natural environmental brushes. Luckily, the old sets are still there, so I haven’t actually lost anything.
The brush menu itself is way more organized now, though. That part I love. I’ve got my sets separated out, new brushes, classic ones, my MaxPacks, and my Nathan Brown art brushes. Everything feels cleaner. Plus, you can finally search for brushes by name (if you remember the name, which I usually don’t 😂).
So overall: I like the update. But will I actually use the new brushes? Eh… maybe not. I’m kind of attached to the ones I already know and love. Still, it’s nice to have new toys to play with.
At the same time, iPadOS 26 also dropped. I updated just to see how it feels with Procreate. Now we’ve got those little Mac-style traffic-light buttons (red, yellow, green), which are placed in the worst possible spot. But window resizing is here, you can resize Procreate however you like. That’s nice. Other apps like Infinite Painter and ZBrush handle this fine, but Affinity? Ugh. Still locked in their fixed windows. Which is why I barely use Affinity apps on iPad anymore.
Procreate, though? Still smooth. Still fun. Still my go-to.
So what about you? Have you tried out Procreate 5.4 yet? Do you like the new brushes, or are you like me and sticking with your old favorites?
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Thank you for sharing your creation video, I enjoyed seeing the process in play. My son uses Procreate and he's really into the new brushes, despite his having a zillion brushes from elsewhere and often making his own brushes too. Seems like a win for him.
We've not updated to iOS26 yet. At some point...at some point...
How do you transfer the drawing in the book into Procreate? Thanks for sharing.