Stencil AI vs Procreate for stencils
For turning a reference into a stencil, Stencil AI wins and it is not close — Procreate has no stencil engine at all, only filters that remove detail. Procreate remains the place you draw original designs. These are two different jobs.
Written by the Stencil AI team — built by working tattoo artists, with quality standards set by an award-winning artist and convention judge of three decades. Verified 2026-09-25.
The short answer
- For stencils, Stencil AI. It reads the image — subject, depth, light direction — keeps the structural outlines and the fine detail, and renders shadow as cross-hatching you can print and transfer. Under a minute, no drawing skill required, three styles to choose from.
- Procreate has no stencil engine. Artists improvise one with a Threshold cutoff or a Color Dodge blur. Both are global filters: they apply identical maths to an eye and to the background, so they can only take detail away.
- Procreate stays in your kit for drawing. Original designs, custom lettering, reworking a client's idea — that is its job, and Stencil AI does not do it.
Side by side
The bottom line: Procreate's stencil methods are global filters — a blur radius or a brightness cutoff applied identically to every pixel, with no idea which part of the image is an eye and which is background. They can only remove detail. Stencil AI reads the image and keeps the detail that tells you how to tattoo it, then renders it as cross-hatching that survives printing.
| Feature | Stencil AI | Procreate |
|---|---|---|
| Reads the image before convertingBlur and Threshold run the same maths on an eye and on background | Subject, depth and light direction understood | No — one filter applied everywhere |
| Structural outlines | Clean, confident, closed contours | Whatever the cutoff leaves behind |
| Shadows and depth | Preserved and printable as cross-hatching | Flattened to black, or blurred to grey |
| Fine detail — hair, iris texture, shadow planes | Kept at print resolution | Erased by the blur radius or cutoff |
| Choose the conversion style | 3 styles — Outline, Standard, Hatching | One look per technique |
| Result | Tattoo-ready with the full tonal map | A sketch you interpret at the station |
| Draw and design from scratchProcreate is a full illustration app | ||
| Time per stencil from a photo | Under a minute | 20 minutes to a few hours |
| Requires drawing skill | ||
| Print at true real-world size | Manual canvas setup | |
| Warp to body curve | Manual liquify | |
| Measure on skin with LiDAR | ||
| Ready-made stencil library | 1,000+ subjects | |
| Price | from $13.99/mo | One-time purchase |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android, web | iPad (and iPhone via Pocket) |
What Procreate is for
- Drawing. A full brush engine, layers and an Apple Pencil — that is where original artwork gets made, and no converter replaces it.
- One purchase, no subscription. If you rarely convert photographs, the free Threshold route may be all the stencil workflow you need — we wrote a guide to it rather than pretend it does not exist.
A threshold is a filter, not a reading of the image
The standard Procreate stencil method is Curves to push contrast, then Selection set to Automatic with the Threshold slider until the fills go solid. That is a filter: every pixel is compared against one brightness cutoff and sent to black or white. It has no notion of what a cheekbone is, or that the dark patch under an eyebrow is structure while the dark patch beside it is background.
On a clean, high-contrast reference that does not matter — the cutoff lands in the right place and you are done in twenty minutes. On a portrait with soft lighting, or fur, or black-and-grey with real tonal range, it is the wrong tool: the cutoff lands mid-cheek, the face turns to patches, and you spend the evening redrawing by hand what the filter destroyed.
Stencil AI's Hatching mode exists for exactly that gap. Mid-tones become dense cross-hatching rather than being flattened away, so the shadow structure and depth are still in the stencil when you transfer it. That is the difference between a stencil you tattoo from and a stencil you fix first.
The two Procreate tricks, and what each one costs you
There are two techniques that circulate, and it is worth being precise about what they do, because neither was designed for stencils.
Duplicate, invert, Color Dodge, Gaussian blur. This is the “instant stencil” trick from every tutorial. It is a pencil-sketch filter: the blur radius decides what survives, so you are literally choosing how much detail to destroy with a slider. Fine detail — individual hairs, the texture in an iris, the break between two shadow planes — disappears into soft grey. It looks convincing on screen at 100% zoom and prints as a faint, mushy transfer.
Curves then Threshold. The opposite failure. One brightness cutoff, everything above it white and everything below black. Nothing soft survives at all: the gradient across a cheek becomes a hard-edged blob, and the depth information that told you where to pack shading is gone from the stencil entirely.
Both are global operations. They treat a pixel in the middle of an eye exactly like a pixel in the background, because they have no idea which is which. That is the whole problem: a stencil is not a darkened photo, it is a map of where the ink goes, and the information you need most — shadow direction, depth, the separation between planes — is the first thing a blur or a cutoff throws away.
Stencil AI's Hatching mode is built the other way round: preserve the detail that tells you how to tattoo the piece, and represent it as cross-hatching dense enough to survive printing and transfer. You get a stencil with depth in it, at the resolution you print at, rather than a sketch you have to interpret at the station.
Using both
The workflow that comes up most often: convert the client photo here, export it, then open it in Procreate to adjust line weights or add the elements that came out of the conversation rather than the photograph. You get the hours back without giving up control of the final linework.
What artists say
Verbatim App Store reviews of Stencil AI. The recurring theme is the one that matters when you are weighing it against tracing in Procreate — the hours it gives back.
“Brilliant bit of kit stencils are perfect love it saves me so many hours .thank you”
“Awesome tool for any busy artist! Highly recommend!”
Common questions
Does Stencil AI replace Procreate?
For making stencils, yes — Stencil AI does that job in under a minute and keeps detail a filter cannot. For drawing, no: Procreate is a full illustration app and nothing here replaces it. Most artists who use both design in Procreate and convert client references in Stencil AI.
Can I make a tattoo stencil in Procreate for free?
If you already own Procreate, yes. The usual route is duplicating the layer, raising contrast with Curves, then using Selection set to Automatic and sliding Threshold until the fills read as solid black or white. It works well and costs nothing extra — it just takes time, and the result depends on your own linework.
Which is faster for converting a client photo?
Stencil AI, by a wide margin: 30 to 60 seconds against 20 minutes to several hours of manual tracing and cleanup, depending on the reference.
Which produces a better stencil?
Stencil AI. Procreate has no stencil engine — artists get there with a Threshold cutoff or a Color Dodge blur, and both are global filters that can only remove detail. Stencil AI reads the image, keeps the structural outlines, the shadow direction and the fine detail, and renders it as cross-hatching dense enough to print and transfer. Procreate is the better tool for drawing an original design; it is not the better tool for turning a reference into a stencil.
Can I use them together?
That is the common workflow. Generate the base stencil in Stencil AI, export it, and refine the linework in Procreate if the piece needs it. Or design in Procreate and use Stencil AI only for the client photos that arrive mid-week.
Other comparisons
All of our comparisons live on the comparisons page.
- Stencil AI vs Ghostline
- Free converters vs Stencil AI
- Ghostline alternatives
- Ghostline vs Procreate compared directly
See it on a reference you have already traced
Upload something you did by hand and compare. That is the fairest test there is.
Create a stencil