RindrawWhy Procreate lines look pixelated or blurry
Procreate paints in pixels, so a line is only ever as sharp as the pixels under it. When ink looks jagged, or a part you moved goes soft, it's almost always one of four things: a canvas with too few pixels, a transform, resizing up, or how pixel art is shared. Here's the fix for each.
For Procreate 5.4. From Procreate's Handbook and Community, where these four threads have been read over 200,000 times. Checked October 29, 2026.
1. The canvas has too few pixels
The most common cause, and the one that DPI doesn't fix. DPI only says how big the canvas prints; it doesn't add pixels. Procreate's Handbook says it plainly: changing the DPI "will not alter the pixel size." A canvas of 1704 × 1900 pixels holds the same detail at 300 dpi as at 600 or 1200.
A small canvas also looks soft on screen before you've done anything. An iPad Pro's screen is 2732 × 2048 pixels, so a canvas smaller than that is already magnified when it fills the screen, and zooming in magnifies it more.
- Make the canvas big in pixels. Give it in inches or millimeters at 300 dpi, the size it will print, or larger. A4 at 300 dpi is 2480 × 3508 pixels; 11 × 17 inches is 3300 × 5100. See canvas sizes for the common ones.
- Start bigger than you need. As a moderator on Procreate's forum put it, it's easy to make artwork smaller afterwards, and hard to make it bigger.
- Mind the layers. A bigger canvas leaves room for fewer layers on the same iPad; Procreate shows how many as you set the size.
2. Every transform softens a little
Scaling or rotating pixels means working out new pixels from the old ones, and some sharpness goes each time. Procreate's team described it on the forum as an unavoidable consequence of repeated transforms in any raster art app: each committed transform that changes an object loses a little quality. Moving something without scaling or rotating it shouldn't blur it; if it does, that's worth reporting to Procreate.
- Transform once. Move, scale and rotate in a single Transform before you tap away, so it's resampled once rather than again and again.
- Choose the interpolation. It's the circular icon second from the right in the Transform bar. The default is Bilinear. Procreate's Handbook calls Bicubic the smoothest and most accurate: use it for paintings and line art. Nearest Neighbor keeps hard edges, which is right for pixel art and looks jagged on anything else.
- Draw parts big, then scale down. Shrinking loses far less than enlarging.
- Keep the original. Duplicate the layer before a big transform, so you can start again from the sharp one.
3. Resizing the canvas up doesn't add detail
Crop & Resize with Resample on enlarges the picture with bicubic interpolation, which, in the Handbook's words, "creates new data from existing pixels." It looks smooth, not sharp: the detail was never drawn. If you'll need a big print, start the canvas at that size.
4. Pixel art goes blurry when it's shared
A 128 × 128 canvas is tiny. Photos, Google Drive and websites show it enlarged, and they smooth it as they do, so the crisp squares turn to mush. The fix, from Procreate's forum, is to enlarge it yourself with Nearest Neighbor before exporting:
- Duplicate the artwork in the gallery, and work on the copy.
- In Actions › Canvas › Crop & Resize, turn Resample off and make the canvas a whole multiple bigger: 128 to 2048 is 16 times.
- Select the layers, open Transform, choose Nearest Neighbor and Uniform, and scale the art up to fill the canvas.
- Export as PNG, not JPEG, which smudges hard edges.
A whole multiple matters: at 16 times, every pixel becomes an even 16 × 16 square. At 15.6 times, some come out a pixel wider than others.
Why this doesn't happen in Rindraw
We make Rindraw, and we built it around this problem. Rindraw keeps each stroke as the path you drew, with its pressure and tilt, and draws the pixels from it.
- Transform as often as you like. Moving, scaling or rotating a stroke changes where it's drawn, and it's drawn again from its path, sharp. The tenth rotation is as clean as the first.
- Resize the canvas, or export big. Crop & Resize redraws the strokes at the new size, and Double Resolution in Export draws them again at twice the size, rather than enlarging pixels.
- Zoom in. Lines are drawn fresh at every zoom while you work.
Pictures are the exception. A photo you import, or an artwork you bring over from Procreate, is pixels, and transforms it the way Procreate does, with the same three interpolations to choose from. What you draw in Rindraw stays sharp.
Questions
Does a higher DPI make Procreate lines sharper?
Not on its own. DPI only sets how big the canvas prints; it doesn't add pixels. Sharper lines need a canvas with more pixels.
Why does moving or rotating a selection in Procreate make it blurry?
Procreate stores the picture as pixels, so each committed scale or rotation works out new pixels and softens it a little. Transform once, use Bicubic, and draw parts bigger than you need.
Which interpolation should I use in Procreate?
Bicubic for paintings and line art, Nearest Neighbor for pixel art. The default is Bilinear.
How do I export pixel art from Procreate without it going blurry?
On a copy, enlarge the canvas a whole multiple with Resample off, scale the layers up with Nearest Neighbor, and export a PNG.
Sources
- Procreate Handbook (5.4), Interpolation: the icon second from the right in the Transform bar; Bilinear by default; Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear and Bicubic, Bicubic "the smoothest and most accurate."
- Procreate Handbook, Canvas actions: Crop and Resize; changing DPI "will not alter the pixel size"; resampling uses bicubic interpolation and "creates new data from existing pixels."
- Procreate Community, Pixelated Lines: about 90,000 views; DPI doesn't add pixels, a canvas smaller than the iPad's screen is already magnified, and it's easier to make artwork smaller than bigger.
- Procreate Community, Resolution loss when moving objects: about 64,000 views; each committed transform loses a little quality, so transform once and draw bigger than needed.
- Procreate Community, Copy Paste: Copied objects get blurry: about 21,000 views; moving or pasting alone shouldn't lose quality, transforming does.
- Procreate Community, Pixel art become blurry after sharing it: about 43,000 views; enlarging with Resample off and Nearest Neighbor before exporting.
Related guides
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Procreate is a trademark of Savage Interactive Pty Ltd. Rindraw is made by Sawir Studio and isn't affiliated with Procreate or Savage Interactive.
