This video provides a beginner-friendly overview of Adobe Fresco, highlighting its key features and workflow advantages for illustrators, particularly its seamless integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud applications and its unique capabilities in vector and motion design.
as a professional illustrator I do
nearly all of my work in Adobe Fresco on
the iPad in this video I'll provide an
overview of the app all the different
tools so you'll be ready to dive in and
make some rad stuff and hey if you're
already using Fresco maybe stick around
anyway cuz I'll be sharing some of my
favorite tips and tricks that maybe you
don't know about maybe you do I don't
know you can leave if you want there are
a few reasons why Adobe Fresco is my
preferred app over similar apps like
procreate one of the main reasons is
that it's part of the Adobe Creative
Cloud suite and as a professional
illustrator I'm often working with
Photoshop and Ill files as those are the
industry standard Fresco files work
seamlessly back and forth between the
different Adobe apps which makes it
really great for my workflow and
speaking of workflow a typical workflow
for me that's a bunch of workflows in a
row let me just flow that into the rest
of this so maybe I'll start with a
sketch in Fresco and then go over to my
computer open it up in Photoshop maybe
make some adjustments there save the
file then go back to my iPad and the fil
is already updated with whatever I did
in Photoshop I can go back and forth
like this as many times as I want to and
it just works perfectly because in fact
Fresco files are actually Photoshop
files which is why photoshop brushes
work in Fresco cuz it's the same thing
now I know you can easily export a PSD
from procreate but that involves a whole
other step because you have the PSD but
then you have to open it up you can work
on that PSD and then you could import it
back into procreate but in Fresco it's
as easy as saving the file and then it's
already there when you go onto your iPad
I actually have a very detailed video
going over the differences between
between procreate and Fresco if you're
interested in that I will put a link in
the description another reason why I
love Adobe Fresco is because sometimes I
need to deliver Vector artwork for some
of my client work when I'm in Fresco I
can easily work in vector or raster I
can work in both in the same file it's
as simple as just choosing Vector
brushes and drawing whatever I need to
draw I can then open up that file and
illustrator and it is ready to go in all
of its Vector glory and the other main
reason I prefer Fresco is because of how
easy it makes it to add motion to your
illustrations I know in procreate you
can use the animation assist and and
make easy frame by frame animations but
in Fresco you're able to have a timeline
for each layer and you're also able to
add motion paths as well it's incredibly
Dynamic and if you want to know more
about that I'll link below to some
videos where I go over animating and
frco actually I think Adobe refers to it
as motion and I think that's a better
way to think about it because it's not
really animation software neither
procreate or Fresco are animation
software they're just a way to add
motion to your illustration you wouldn't
animate like a full cartoon in either of
these I feel like a lot of beginner or
just like getting started with videos
about different apps go into so much
detail that they're a bit overwhelming
in this video I'm not going to go over
everything but I'm going to go over
enough to get you started and just dive
in and start working without feeling
like there's too much to learn so if
you're here on this video needing to
know every specific detail and all the
things you can do in Fresco this
probably isn't the video for you but if
you're starting out in Fresco and you're
a little bit confused and just want some
tips and tricks you're in the right
place all right let's head over to my
iPad and dive into Fresco I'll meet you
there okay so I have Fresco opened up
here this is the home screen and you'll
see some options on the side the learn
and discover I to be honest with you I
think I don't know I think those are
there to teach you some stuff I have
never used those below that you'll see
files you'll see your files and then
over here is like recent files and then
you could like share files between other
people and Fresco and then you've got
deleted files which will be there for a
little bit of time before they're gone
forever this is sort of like file
Purgatory I think maybe it's 30 days or
something like that I don't know for
sure but they don't immediately go away
okay so when you click on your files
it's going to open up your most recent
files this will be anything that you
have saved in Creative Cloud so if you
have like a Photoshop file or something
like that it will show up here that's
saved there and then you can open it up
and edit it like that all right so I'm
going to go ahead and do a new document
and I'm going to choose choose a custom
size and when you're choosing a size you
just want to make sure that your file is
big enough for what you want to do with
it so for example if you ever want to be
printing something you need to make sure
it's a minimum of 300 DPI at whatever
inch size that you want to use or
centimeters if you are in the rest of
the world that use a system that makes
sense I am in silly America so we're
using inches but here you could type in
a size so let's say I was going to make
something to print and I I wanted it to
be 8X
10 so I would choose 8X 10 but then I
would make sure that this is 300 DPI
this isn't a video where I'm going to go
into all that stuff but just know that
300 DPI is the minimum resolution for
printing a document 300 DPI at 100%
scale so we got 8x10 300 DPI create
document and now we have our file here
the first thing you'll notice when
you're in Fresco as opposed to like
procreate or something like that is
there's three different kinds of brushes
so the first brush set is just regular
raster brushes so this is just like
procreate um these are you know what you
would expect the more pixel based
brushes below that is the live brushes
now I don't use these because I'm not a
painter but these things are super cool
and they're the kind of thing that like
I always show people when I'm showing
them Fresco or something like that just
because it's magical so just just
quickly cuz I can't help myself so these
water brushes and like the oil brushes
are like the real so you can like
reactivate them with color and stuff
like that um so let's just pick a bright
orange color and start
painting and you can see that you know
you go over it it just starts to bleed
into it you could grab another color
let's say we switch to this
red you know they just it like
reactivates and you know you
can can get pretty wde wild with this
stuff uh super cool I don't use these at
all but if you're a painter uh these are
super cool the oil brushes are very
similar the cool thing about this is you
could like mix them here even though you
kind of wouldn't be able to do that in
mess now below the live brushes are your
vector brushes so this is one of the
things that I mentioned that sets Fresco
apart so when you're working here
everything you're drawing is Vector Line
work which is super great you can zoom
in infinitely and it's going to be tight
as can be cuz there no pixels involved
so underneath the vector brushes there
are some options I really just use the
basic round brush I don't like any of
these other options they're um there's
this like velocity taper I will note too
though that I have my smoothing up
pretty high which makes it look like
there's a little bit of a lag there's
not a lag that's just how the smoothing
Works which I'm going to talk about in
minutes but anyway these are the vector
brushes when you're working in Vector
you will notice on your layers you'll
have this little double circle icon that
just means it's a vector layer you can
see that same thing under the brush it's
like that white circle with the blue
that means it's a vector layer so you
can have both Vector layers and pixel
layers so if I do a new layer and I grab
a pixel brush and I draw on this layer
you'll see that that one has the pixel
icon this is a way you can keep them
separate and it's cool that you can work
in both raster and Vector in one
file so um the Eraser tool is below that
I honestly don't really use the regular
eraser that much I use the um modifier
with the brush so let me show you how
that works so let me grab a brush that I
like and use often so this retro Supply
Co classic inor if you're interested in
these retro brushes there's a link in my
profile to those so this brush has some
tooth to it I'm in a little bit so you
can kind of see that detail but let's
say I want to erase this and I grab the
standard eraser and I go in and erase
that it's got this like clean line and
it's hard to sort of make this texture
look natural when I erase it so let me
undo that go back to the brush so
instead of using the Eraser you can just
double tap on this little modifier
circle thing and this changes your brush
to an eraser in that same brush so you
can maintain that same texture which is
really cool and then you just double tap
to turn it back off I feel like this is
easier than grabbing the Eraser as well
below that is like uh the smudge tool or
something I I don't use this to be
honest but you can
smudge I mentioned that this isn't going
to cover everything but this is going to
get you started so uh you know that's
this is not the video where we talk
about the smudge tool so let's um let's
delete that and we'll go down this is
your select tool we can't select
anything because our layers empty but if
I draw something
here I can grab the selection tool and
then I can move it around or transform
it or skew it or just distort it in some
way there's also the liquefy which is
cool but I don't really use it that
often I don't know you can do cool stuff
with it you can make interesting shapes
with it it's a nice feature there's
different options you can like make it
suck into the
Center or blow it up it's a good way to
like Smooth out shapes and stuff like
that I just always sort of forget about
it but it's a cool
feature so we've got the uh selection
tool below that there's like the lasso
tool which you can draw a selection
around a certain area and then it'll
select that area if you want to like cut
and paste that selection if you tap on
the layer you can go to cut selection
and then paste selection and now we've
got that shape on its own layer you can
also use the magic W selection and that
just selects like the full whatever
shape you've got
there you can also like paint select so
like paint an area that you want to
select I don't really use this one either
either
but it's actually pretty
handy and then you've got typical shape selection
selection
things and then you can also load the
last selection if you like deselect
something and then want to reselect
it at the bottom you'll see some tools
that pop up for what you're using so
this is to like transform what's being
selected and then you can erase what's
in the selection so I what I have
selected is actually not on the layer
I'm working on so if I click down on
this layer and hit erase it'll get rid
of that cuz that's what was selected up
at the top here you'll see these two
arrows pointing different directions
this is undo and this is redo so if I do
undo it'll undo what I just erased if I
hit this it'll redo erasing it uh so
let's deselect
that let's move down to the paint bucket
the Paint Bucket is a helpful tool if
you're used to procreate you'll know
that you sort of drag a color down to
fill a spot when you are using Fresco
you use a paint bucket tool like
Photoshop and you just sort of tap where
you want to fill you'll see that there's
this white halo around the edges you can
adjust that with your color margin here
you can pull this up until it goes away
the reason why I like the Paint Bucket
versus dragging it in is cuz if you have
like multiple things like this you can
just go in and tap them
both as opposed to like dragging for
each thing in procreate below that we've
got some shapes to be honest I don't use
these either but you can insert shapes
from you know Adobe stock or whatever
they're providing here uh not something
that I use not something you need to
worry about unless you want to use those
things below that is your text tool you
just can click Start typ in pulls up the
keyboard and you can
do butt fart because that is something
you might type and then you'll see here
style text this is where you can choose a
font and then you could change the size
here can adjust the
spacing if you want more space in
between the letters you can do that you
can also go back back to like the
transform tool and change the size that
way if you wanted to like edit your type
like it's an image you could go ahead
and tap on that type layer and then
convert to pixel layer and then you
could draw like directly on
this layer so if you like grabbed your
brush you know you can be adding to it
or customizing it
or you know you could erase parts of it
you could put some sweet motion lines on
it you can do whatever you
want below that is the eye dropper tool
this allows you to select a color so you
would just like hold on it and it would
grab a color obviously we don't have any
colors here but um if we
did that's how you would do
it you can also use that from like if
you're in the the brush and you're
drawing you don't have to switch to the
eye dropper tool you can just be in the brush
brush
draw this you got white and you're like
okay I want to draw black now you could
just hold on this and then it'll switch to
to
Black so that's pretty helpful below
that is if you want to add an image to
your document so if I went ahead and
let's say I grabbed my the skull drawing
that I
did I'll load that in there which is
pretty cool the other thing that adobe
does if you saw that little update is
that it creates a color palette from
your image so this is a cool thing if
you find an image that you really like
the colors on and you want to steal
them uh it'll automatically create a
palette for you so when we go into our
colors here you'll see this color
palette was generated from this image so
that's a really cool feature that uh is
nice so when your image is placed you'll
notice it's got this like image icon
that means it's not something that you
can draw with or work with cuz it's like
an image file but you can go ahead and
convert it to a pixel layer and then you
can do whatever you want with it you can
draw with it you can uh you know erase
stuff whatever you want to do you could
go in and grab the liquefy
brushes start messing around with
that with the liquefy brushes I don't
know I don't use them but as you can see
you could do some cool stuff with it
like that type effect is kind of cool like
like
that think I might have to use this more
often uh look at this uh what we got
here this is this is some good stuff um
stuff so we just have a fresh clean
layer so that I can talk about some
stuff so going over the tools um I
started like just willy-nilly talking
about layers so I guess I should cover that
that
so that this makes sense for uh overall
you know
beginners when you are drawing it's
going to show up on whatever layer is selected
selected
unless you have a a raster layer and you
start drawing with a vector brush then
it's automatically going to make a new
layer because you can't draw a vector on
layer so what I'll often do with the
layers is go in and grab like a pencil brush
brush
to sketch something [Music]
out and just draw some
some
letters I don't
know so I'll like sketch something get it
it
to roughly what I want it to look like
so maybe it's some 3D letters that say
what and then I'll turn down the opacity
and then make a new layer and then draw
a tighter version on top of that so
sometimes it's another sketch so maybe I
won't go right to an inking brush or
something I want to use yet cuz I still
want to refine this and I'll use this as
like a guide so I'll like lower the
transparency or the opacity of the layer
which you know you can do here this
controls how much of the layer you
see and then maybe I want it to like
wiggle a little bit so I'll use that
sketch l there
lines like
that so I'm just sort of getting a feel
for the comp composition and it's okay
that's that's good enough for me so then
I'll like go ahead I'll go back in and
delete that first sketch layer and then
I'll use this and then I'll make a new
layer to do like my tightened up line
work so that at that point I'll often
switch to you know this classic anchor
that I like a lot or Kyle Webster is too
smooth to be forgotten I'm going to go
back to this classic anchor cuz that's
the one I like so I want to do some
black line work so I'll switch this to
Black and if I'm doing some like smooth
lines like
this what I'll do is I'll turn up the
smoothing on my brush and this will help
it make a a clean line without me having
to be that
smooth so as you can see it's already at
100 cuz that's uh where I often use this
but let me show you the difference so
when this is turned all the way down if
I'm trying to make this like smooth
edge it's
uh you know I'm doing an okay job now
but sometimes if it's early in the day
and I've had a lot of coffee my hands
aren't that
steady so let's let's undo that and then
let's look at the difference so if you
click on this little smoothing thing
bring that up to
100 then it gives it a little bit of a
delay cuz it sort of slows things down
line I know
there's some people who aren't used to
this how the smoothing Works whoops I'm
not wearing my gloves so sometimes I
accidentally undo things um people who
aren't used to the way the smoothing
Works might think that there's like lag
in Fresco if they have if they're using
a brush with the smoothing turned all
the way up but it's just the way that
the smoothing works it just slows things
down and if you don't like that you can
just bring it all the way down to zero
whatsoever so that's that's how I would
do this and that would how I would do my
final Line work or whatever and then I
would go in and delete my sketch layer
so let me just uh finish this up quickly
so that I can show you some like coloring
coloring
for this is not very good
but I just want something to do a quick
demo with so I'm going to go over the
fact that I hate this okay so I'll use
the paint bucket fill that in black
black
and let's say I want to do my color on a
separate layer so what I can do is
delete my sketch layer and make a new
layer can set this layer as a reference
layer so when you tap on a layer it
opens up this menu that shows you all
your different options here where you
can like clear it or delete it or um
duplicate it copy paste it whatever you
want to do
but if you um do set as a reference then
go on a different layer and grab a
color it'll fill in that shape but on a
a separate layer which is pretty cool so
your color is is separate there so let's
delete that color
thing let's release reference another
thing you can do is you could lock the
transparency and what that would do is
just make it so that whatever you draw
will just go in the spaces where you
have a drawing so for example if I'm
drawing here you don't see anything but
then once I get to the line work that
color comes
in I use this sometimes if I'm trying to
like add some grit or Texture so I'll
lock transparency and like grab a uh
texture brush use this one for an example
example choose
choose
white and then sort of like come in
and add some grit and
it you could do this another way a non-destructive
