Help — iPad

OmniSketch

Procedural sketching for iPad

Draw something beautiful in 60 seconds — no talent required. Every OmniSketch brush is procedural: it builds its own art as you move, so one finger and one minute are enough. You can reopen this guide any time from the ? button in the gallery.

Canvas toolbar

Gallery

Save the current sketch and return to your gallery.

Brush color

A swatch of your current ink. Tap it to pick the color you draw with.

Background color

Choose the color of the canvas behind your strokes.

Blend mode

Choose how new strokes mix with the ink already on the layer — see Blend modes below for what each one does.

Mirror

Mirror your strokes across the vertical, horizontal, or both axes for symmetrical art.

Brush & color

The big button shows your current brush with a dot of your current color. Tap it to pick a brush and set color, size, opacity and detail — all in one panel.

Eraser

Erase on the current layer. Tap again to switch back to your last brush.

Undo & Redo

Step backwards and forwards through your recent strokes.

Layers

Add, duplicate, reorder, hide/show, rename and delete layers.

Zen mode

Everything disappears but your art. Touch the top edge of the screen to bring the toolbar back.

The canvas

One finger always draws. Pinch with two fingers to zoom, drag with two to pan, and double-tap with two fingers to fit the whole canvas on screen. Three-finger tap hides or shows the toolbar. Apple Pencil pressure and tilt shape the stroke.

Canvas size. A new sketch starts at your iPad's screen size. Tap the size chip on a fresh canvas to choose Square 2048, Story 1080×1920 or Print 3840 — larger canvases are part of Premium, and each size shows how many layers your iPad supports at that size.

Brushes & color

Choosing a brush. Tap the brush button to open the panel, then pick from the Standard and Geometry packs (24 classic brushes each) or the Next‑Gen pack — Silk, Ember and Chrome, powered by a new Metal engine. Every brush is procedural: it builds its own texture as you draw, so moving slowly or quickly changes the result. Watch the preview — the stroke speeds up and slows down to show both sides of each brush.

Color. In the brush panel, tap the color well for the system color picker (grid, spectrum, sliders and an eyedropper). The preview and the toolbar's color dot update live.

Size, opacity & detail. The sliders in the brush panel tune the stroke. "Detail" only appears for brushes that support it.

Locked brushes show a small lock — tap one to see what OmniSketch Premium adds.

Blend modes

A blend mode changes how new strokes mix with the ink already on the layer. Below, the same azure stroke is drawn over the same art in every picture — only the blend mode changes. One more thing worth knowing: OmniSketch brushes lay down many overlapping marks, so in a blend mode a stroke also blends with itself where it overlaps — drawing slowly deepens the effect. That's not a bug, it's a technique.

Normal example — Normal
Paints over whatever's underneath. No mixing.

Multiply example — Multiply
Darkens — colors stack like layered marker ink.

Screen example — Screen
Lightens — like shining lights together. Lovely over dark colors.

Overlay example — Overlay
Boosts contrast — darks get darker, lights get lighter, colors get richer.

Darken example — Darken
Keeps whichever color is darker at each spot.

Lighten example — Lighten
Keeps whichever color is lighter at each spot.

Color Dodge example — Color Dodge
Brightens what's underneath toward white — glowing highlights.

Color Burn example — Color Burn
Deepens what's underneath toward black — dense, scorched shadows.

Soft Light example — Soft Light
A gentle wash of light or shade — Overlay with a soft touch.

Hard Light example — Hard Light
A strong spotlight — bold highlights and shadows from the stroke's color.

Difference example — Difference
Inverts the colors underneath — instant neon negatives. Overlaps flip back.

Exclusion example — Exclusion
Like Difference, but softer and grayer.

Hue example — Hue
Recolors what's underneath with the stroke's hue — light and shade stay put.

Saturation example — Saturation
Makes what's underneath as vivid — or as muted — as the stroke.

Color example — Color
Paints hue and vividness but keeps the light and shade — classic tinting.

Luminosity example — Luminosity
Keeps the colors underneath, paints only the stroke's brightness.

Layers

Build your sketch up in layers. Tap a layer to draw on it — the highlighted row is the one your strokes land on. Drag a row to reorder. Free sketches use up to 3 layers; Premium unlocks the most your iPad supports for the canvas size.

On each layer

Eye

Hide or show the layer. A hidden layer keeps its ink and comes back when you tap the eye again.

Pencil

Rename the layer.

Along the bottom

Add layer

A new empty layer above the current one.

Duplicate layer

A copy of the current layer, ink and all.

Clear layer

Wipes the ink off the current layer but keeps the layer.

Delete layer

Removes the current layer and everything on it (you'll be asked first).

The gallery

Your sketches, newest first. Tap one to keep drawing. Long-press for everything else: Duplicate, Rename, Rotate, Sketch Info, Save to Photos, Share, Expand to a 2× canvas, Move to Folder, and Delete.

Folders

Tap New Folder, then drag sketches onto a folder to file them — or use "Move to Folder" in a sketch's menu. Folders can hold folders. Deleting a folder never deletes sketches; everything inside moves up a level. Coming back from a sketch drops you in its folder.

New sketch

Start a fresh canvas.

Slideshow

Sit back and watch your gallery.

Settings

Toolbar auto-hide, double-tap to pick color, left-handed layout, your artist name for shared files, and OmniSketch Premium.

Help

This guide.

Share & export

Share… sends your sketch as an image — standard size, or High Resolution (2×) with Premium: OmniSketch redraws every stroke at double resolution, so it's genuinely sharper, not just bigger. Layered PSD exports your layers — names, order and opacity — for Procreate, Photoshop or Affinity.

Share Sketch File sends the sketch itself — a single .omnisketch file, drawing history and all — which opens right up in OmniSketch on another iPad.

Save to Photos drops the image straight into your photo library. Everything you share or save carries your sketch's name; untitled sketches get a tidy "OmniSketch" date stamp.

Expand to 2× Canvas redraws a sketch onto a canvas twice the size — procedural brushes mean it's redrawn, not stretched.

Bringing art in

OmniSketch opens images (PNG, JPEG, HEIC), layered Photoshop files (PSD), OpenRaster files and .omnisketch files. Use "Copy to OmniSketch" in another app's share sheet, or open straight from the Files app. PSD layers keep their names, order and opacity wherever possible — if something exotic has to be flattened or converted, OmniSketch tells you exactly what changed. Then draw right on top.

Home-screen widget

Add the Recent Art widget (small or large) to your home screen and your latest sketch lives there. Tap it to open that sketch right in OmniSketch. On iOS 17 and later, long-press the widget and choose "Edit Widget" to show one particular sketch instead, or a rotating slideshow of your whole gallery or a single folder, at the pace you choose.

Tips

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Three-finger tap the canvas to hide or show the toolbar while you draw.

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Turn on Double-tap canvas to pick color in Settings for quick color changes.

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Combine Mirror with a Geometry brush for kaleidoscope-style patterns.

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Put backgrounds and details on separate layers so you can tweak them independently.

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Try Screen or Color Dodge strokes over a dark background — instant glow.