Quick answer: Can you use Procreate brushes in Illustrator? Not directly. Procreate brushes are .brush and .brushset files built for a raster painting engine, while Adobe Illustrator is a vector program whose brushes are defined by paths, art objects, and scatter rules. Illustrator cannot open or import Procreate brush files, and there is no official converter. What you can do is recreate the look: export a stroke sample or the brush’s shape and grain images from Procreate, vectorize them with Image Trace, and define a new Art Brush, Scatter Brush, or Pattern Brush in Illustrator. For a true raster brush experience inside the Adobe ecosystem, Photoshop and Fresco are the closer matches.
Anyone who has built up a library of favorite Procreate brushes eventually wants them everywhere, and Illustrator is usually the first place the request runs into a wall. The two programs draw in fundamentally different ways, and that difference, not a licensing choice, is what blocks a simple import.
This explainer defines what a Procreate brush is and what an Illustrator brush is, explains precisely why one does not translate into the other, walks through the practical workarounds that get a Procreate-style texture or stroke into Illustrator, and points to the Adobe tools that do accept raster brushes. Animators and illustrators who want their brush collection to pay off inside Procreate itself may also find the roundup of the best Procreate animation brushes useful for frame-by-frame work.
What a Procreate Brush Actually Is
A Procreate brush is a small package, saved with the .brush extension, that contains two grayscale images and a long list of settings. The shape image defines the stamp that gets repeated along a stroke, like the footprint of a bristle brush or a hard round dot. The grain image is a texture that gets tiled or stamped inside the shape to simulate paper, canvas, or chalk. The settings control spacing, jitter, pressure response, tilt, wet mix, color dynamics, and how the shape and grain interact.
When you draw, Procreate stamps the shape thousands of times along your path, modulates it by pressure and speed, applies the grain, and writes pixels into the layer. The result is a raster image: a grid of colored pixels with no memory of the path that made it. A .brushset file is just a folder of these .brush files bundled together.
What an Illustrator Brush Actually Is
Illustrator stores artwork as vector paths: mathematical curves with stroke and fill attributes that can be scaled infinitely. Its brushes are instructions for how to decorate a path.
- Calligraphic brushes vary stroke width based on angle and, with a tablet, pressure, producing a shape like a nib.
- Scatter brushes spread copies of a vector object along a path with controllable size, spacing, and rotation.
- Art brushes stretch a single vector drawing along the full length of a path.
- Pattern brushes tile vector segments along a path with special corner and end tiles.
- Bristle brushes simulate a paintbrush with multiple bristles and generate vector paths with transparency.
Every one of these produces editable vector geometry. There is no pixel grain stage, no stamp image, and no raster output. An Illustrator brush is a rule applied to a path; a Procreate brush is a pixel-painting recipe.
Why Procreate Brushes Cannot Be Imported Into Illustrator
The incompatibility comes down to three things.
File format. Illustrator’s brush panel accepts brushes stored inside .ai library files. It has no parser for .brush or .brushset archives and will report the file as unsupported if you try to open one.
Rendering model. Even if the file could be read, the data inside describes raster stamping behavior that Illustrator’s vector engine has no way to execute. Settings like wet mix, grain depth, and shape jitter have no vector equivalent.
Output type. A Procreate stroke is pixels. An Illustrator stroke is a path. Converting pixels to paths is possible through tracing, but it is a lossy translation of one drawing, not a translation of the brush that drew it.
This is also why the reverse is impossible: Illustrator brushes cannot be loaded into Procreate.
Compatibility at a Glance
| Software | Opens .brush / .brushset? | Engine type | Workaround to use Procreate brush looks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Illustrator | No | Vector | Vectorize a stroke sample or shape image and build an Art or Scatter brush |
| Adobe Photoshop | No, but accepts .abr | Raster | Export shape and grain PNGs, define a new brush with the same images and settings |
| Adobe Fresco | No, but accepts .abr | Raster and vector | Same as Photoshop; Fresco shares Photoshop’s pixel brush format |
| Affinity Designer | No | Vector and raster | Rebuild as a raster brush on the Pixel Persona using exported textures |
| Clip Studio Paint | No | Raster | Register shape and grain images as brush tip and texture materials |
| Procreate Dreams | Yes | Raster | Native support; same brush library |
Workaround 1: Vectorize a Stroke and Make an Art Brush
This is the most useful method for textured line brushes, inkers, and dry-media strokes.
- In Procreate, create a new canvas with a transparent background at a high resolution, 3000 pixels wide or more. Select the brush you want to translate and draw one long, straight, horizontal stroke in black across the canvas with even pressure.
- Export the canvas as a PNG with transparency.
- In Illustrator, place the PNG on a new artboard (File, Place). Keep it selected.
- Open the Image Trace panel and choose a preset such as Black and White Logo or Silhouettes. Increase Threshold to capture lighter grain, lower it to simplify. Turn on Ignore White. Click Expand to convert the trace to editable paths.
- Clean up. Delete stray specks with the Selection tool. Fewer anchor points mean a lighter, faster brush, so consider Object, Path, Simplify.
- Drag the artwork into the Brushes panel and choose New Art Brush. Set the direction arrow to match the stroke, choose Stretch to Fit Stroke Length or Stretch Between Guides for ends that should keep their shape, and set Colorization to Tints so the brush takes any stroke color.
- Test on a curved path and adjust the brush’s width and Colorization until it behaves.
The result is a vector line that carries the texture of the original Procreate stroke. It will not respond to pressure the way the Procreate brush did, though pairing it with a Width Profile or using the Width tool on individual strokes approximates tapering.
Workaround 2: Vectorize the Shape Image for a Scatter Brush
For stamp-like brushes, such as leaves, stars, splatters, or chalk dots, the brush’s shape image is the asset you want.
- In Procreate, open the Brush Studio for the brush, go to the Shape tab, tap Edit, then Import and Share to export the Shape Source as an image. Do the same for the Grain Source if the texture matters.
- Open the shape PNG in Illustrator and Image Trace it as described above. Because shape images are white-on-black, invert the image first in any image editor or use Image Trace with Invert enabled so the stamp becomes a filled black shape.
- Expand and clean the paths.
- Drag into the Brushes panel and choose New Scatter Brush. Set Size, Spacing, Scatter, and Rotation to Random with ranges that mimic Procreate’s jitter settings. If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet connected, set these to Pressure instead.
- Set Colorization to Tints or Hue Shift so the scattered elements follow the stroke color.
A Procreate splatter brush with scatter jitter translates well this way, and the vector version scales cleanly to any print size.
Workaround 3: Paint in Procreate, Vectorize the Artwork
Sometimes the goal is not a reusable brush but one finished piece that needs to end up as vectors, for a logo, a cut file, or a print job that demands scalability.
Paint the piece in Procreate at high resolution, export a PNG, and Image Trace the whole thing in Illustrator with a preset suited to the artwork: Sketched Art for linework, 6 or 16 Colors for limited palettes, High Fidelity Photo for painterly work. Expand and clean up. This preserves the Procreate brush character in that single image and produces usable vectors, at the cost of file complexity and some edge softening.
Workaround 4: Use Illustrator’s Own Textured Brushes
Illustrator ships with brush libraries, found under Window, Brush Libraries, that include Artistic Ink, Artistic ChalkCharcoalPencil, Artistic Watercolor, and Grunge Brush Vector Pack. Many Procreate favorites have a reasonable vector cousin here. Starting from a built-in brush and adjusting its width, Colorization, and overlap settings is often faster than vectorizing from scratch, and the strokes stay lightweight.
Third-party vector brush packs built for Illustrator also exist and are designed from the outset for the vector engine, so they behave predictably in ways traced Procreate strokes sometimes do not.
What You Lose in Translation
It is worth being clear about the gap so expectations match the results.
- Pressure dynamics. Procreate’s pressure-to-size and pressure-to-opacity curves do not carry over. Illustrator supports pressure for Calligraphic, Scatter, and Bristle brushes with a tablet, but the behavior must be configured per brush and is simpler.
- Grain and texture blending. Procreate layers grain inside the shape and blends it with the canvas texture. An Art brush shows one fixed texture stretched along the path.
- Wet mixing and smudging. No vector equivalent exists.
- Opacity buildup. Overlapping strokes in Procreate darken naturally. In Illustrator, each stroke is a separate object; achieving buildup means lowering opacity and setting the Multiply blend mode manually.
- File weight. A heavily textured traced brush can contain thousands of anchor points, and a drawing with many such strokes can slow Illustrator noticeably.
Where Procreate Brushes Do Translate More Cleanly
If the real need is “use my Procreate brushes in an Adobe app,” Illustrator is the wrong target and Photoshop or Fresco is the right one. Both use the raster .abr brush format and accept a brush tip image plus a texture, which maps closely onto Procreate’s shape and grain. Export the shape and grain sources from Brush Studio, define a new brush in Photoshop with the shape as the tip, load the grain as a Texture in Brush Settings, and set Spacing, Scatter, and Transfer to match. Fresco reads the same .abr files and adds live watercolor and oil brushes of its own.
Many brush creators sell their sets in both .brushset and .abr versions for exactly this reason, so before rebuilding anything, check whether the original designer already offers an Adobe-compatible version of the same brush.
Tips for a Cleaner Procreate-to-Illustrator Workflow
- Trace at high resolution. Export Procreate strokes at 300 dpi or higher so Image Trace has detail to work with and edges stay crisp.
- Trace in black. Single-color strokes trace far more predictably than colored ones; add color in Illustrator through Colorization.
- Simplify paths. After expanding, use Simplify to cut anchor points by half or more with little visible change.
- Save brushes to a library. Once a traced brush works, save the Brushes panel as a library (.ai) so it loads in future documents without redoing the trace.
- Keep Procreate for painting, Illustrator for finishing. Most professional workflows treat the two as stages rather than substitutes: texture and expression in Procreate, clean type and scalable output in Illustrator.
FAQs
Can you import Procreate brushes into Adobe Illustrator?
No. Illustrator cannot read .brush or .brushset files, and its vector brush engine has no equivalent to Procreate’s raster stamping. You can recreate the look by vectorizing a stroke sample or the brush’s shape image and defining a new Illustrator brush.
Is there a converter for Procreate brushes to Illustrator?
No official or reliable third-party converter exists, because the two formats describe fundamentally different things. Conversion tools exist for Procreate to Photoshop (.abr) because both are raster, and those are the better route for Adobe users.
Can you use Procreate brushes in Photoshop or Fresco instead?
Not directly either, but both accept raster brush tips and textures. Export the shape and grain images from Procreate’s Brush Studio and build an .abr brush with them. Many brush makers also sell matching .abr versions of their sets.
How do you make an Illustrator brush from a Procreate stroke?
Draw a long horizontal stroke in black on a transparent canvas, export as PNG, place it in Illustrator, run Image Trace with Ignore White, Expand, then drag the result into the Brushes panel as a New Art Brush with Colorization set to Tints.
Can Illustrator brushes be used in Procreate?
No. Illustrator brushes are vector rules and Procreate only loads .brush and .brushset files. You could export an Illustrator brush stroke as a PNG and import it as a Procreate shape source, which gives a stamp with that silhouette.
Which is better for brush-heavy illustration, Procreate or Illustrator?
They serve different purposes. Procreate is a raster painting app with expressive, textured brushes. Illustrator produces scalable vector art with cleaner, simpler brushes. Many artists paint in Procreate and move to Illustrator for type, layout, and print-ready output.
Final Thoughts
Procreate brushes and Illustrator brushes are not two dialects of the same language; one paints pixels and the other decorates paths. Nothing imports, but a stroke sample or shape image traced into an Art or Scatter brush carries a surprising amount of the original character, and Photoshop or Fresco accept rebuilt raster versions almost one for one. If animation is where your Procreate library is headed, the roundup of Procreate brushes built for animation frames covers sets designed for the Animation Assist workflow, where the brushes run natively and no conversion is needed.
