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The Evernote Blog

Skitch for Mac Update: You Asked, We Listened

Product updates | By Andrew Sinkov
 

We’ve been listening closely to all of the great feedback and suggestions from the community since last week’s launch of the redesigned Skitch 2.0 for Mac. For our first update (2.0.1), we made sure to incorporate as many of those requests as possible.

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Choose Your File Type

The Drag Me tab on the bottom of the Skitch window makes it incredibly easy to share your comments, ideas and annotations with friends and colleagues. Just grab the tab and drag the image into an email, your desktop or anywhere else.

In this update, we’ve added a file type selector into the Drag Me tab. This lets you choose the file type (PNG, JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP) for the resulting file. Choose what you want and the image that you drop will be in that format.

Smarter Screen Snap

Whenever you snap your screen, Skitch pops up a confirmation that lets you modify your selected area or change it to specific dimensions. Very often, the area that you selected initially is the area that you want, so we now place the Capture button of the popup wherever your mouse happens to be. A quick second click gets the job done.

Improved Sync Options

In this update, we’re giving you more control over the Evernote sync. In the Sync Preferences, there’s now a dropdown next to Save Skitch Notes to Evernote. The options are:

  • Always: Whenever you create a new Skitch note, the previous one is saved and synced to Evernote
  • Ask: Whenever you create a new Skitch note, you will be asked whether to sync the note with Evernote
  • Never ask: Whenever you create a new Skitch note, the previous one is discarded and replaced with the new one

When you choose either Ask or Never Ask, a Save button appears at the top of the Skitch window. If you want to save your Skitch notes to Evernote, just click Save.

Flip and Rotate

There’s a new Image menu that lets you flip and rotate your Skitch notes either clockwise or counterclockwise. Every one of these functions also gets a keyboard shortcut.

  • Flip: SHIFT + CMD + F
  • Rotate clockwise: CMD + R
  • Rotate counterclockwise: SHIFT + CMD + R

Multi-select in the Library

The Library, those four squares in the top right corner, is your window into Skitch notes that are synchronized with Evernote. We enabled multi-select in the Library so that you can easily delete unwanted images.

New Keyboard Shortcuts

We’ve added a new keyboard shortcut — Command + / — that makes sharing a URL to a Skitch note quick and easy. This shortcut shares the note publicly and places the URL to that note into your clipboard. Then, you simply paste that URL into an IM, email, blog post, or forum and you’re done.

Change Arrow Directions

By default, when you draw an arrow in Skitch, the mouse cursor is attached to the arrowhead. Many people prefer to draw their arrows in the opposite direction, tail first. Now you can do that by holding down the Option key as you draw the arrow.

More improvements

We’ve made a bunch of other improvements to the app and many more are on the way. Thanks everyone for your great, constructive comments. We’re listening. We’ve also made the old version of Skitch available for those that want it. Stay tuned, our app to help you communicate and share your ideas visually is just getting started.

Download Skitch for Mac »

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  • Terence

    I suggest to abandon the project 2.0 and return to develop the previous version.
    Hoping you choose to focus on a v 1.0.13

  • Gael

    I’m missing the PDF export the most. It’s the only format that allowed the recipient of the image to copy and paste my notes. I use it to communicate colours, spacing, type sizes of my designs to developers and clients alike.

    Also could you make the type more elegant? those huge outline+shadow are horrible (that’s not new to v2 though)

    <3 evernote and skitch

  • Jeff

    I need to be able to save to a notebook that is not sync’d. I don’t mind the snapshots going into evernote but I can’t let them be sync’d to the cloud for security reasons (corporate dictates). Continuing to stay on v1…

  • Mike

    Why can’t names of images captured in Skitch be edited in Evernote? Why should I have to open another application if I want to change the name of a note while I’m in Evernote? Am I missing something here? To make the whole thing even more ridiculous, when I change the note name in Skitch it doesn’t update in Evernote when I sync them…

  • Bobby Moore

    Please bring back the ability for custom colors and set transparency!

  • http://jan.rychter.com/ Jan Rychter

    The 2.0 version is still a huge step backwards. Features are missing, usability is lower, it keeps bombarding me with popup windows asking about evernote stuff which I really, really don’t care about — it simply gets in the way of getting things done.

    I tried really hard to use evernote. Several times. Each and every time there was just too much ‘friction’ — seemingly minor usability problems, lack of general taste, lack of polish, things that you might discount, but that actually make using the product so much harder. Now Skitch starts displaying the same traits.

    What you should do is:

    a) go back to Skitch 1.0,

    b) make the Skitch design team work on improving Evernote, not the other way around!

  • http://www.maccast.com Adam Christianson

    Can I add my votes for:

    1) Ability to fine tune element sizes (holding option while adjusting slider in 1.0)

    2) Ability for custom colors and set transparency

    3) Bring paint bucket (fill) back

    4) Back to menubar item

  • http://www.maccast.com Adam Christianson

    Oh, also. Needs a lot of work on performance. Beach balls galore.

    Thanks.

  • http://www.freeassoc.com Josh Freeman

    I don’t find Evernote particularly friction-producing. I’ve used it for years and like it a lot. But the new Skitch is a sad development. You took a simple, powerful tool that we (and you) absolutely loved and made it into a complicated, clunky tool with fewer features. As a long-time podcast listener, I know you guys are smart and well-intentioned. But, boys, you blew this transition. I agree with the others who suggest you start with the old Skitch — make it work as seamlessly with Evernote as you like, but don’t remove all its other great capabilities.

  • Eric Nordstrom

    I believe the team that worked on Skitch 2.0 is COMPLETELY, 100% out of touch with how/why so many people used the original Skitch. The changes (and the attempt to correct them) run counter to everything that once made Skitch great. It doesn’t make sense why Evernote bought Skitch if their intention was to build an entirely new application.

    I have two main issues:

    If I want to adjust my crop and capture area, I’ll select it from a menu….I can’t stand being asked every single time if I want to adjust my dimensions. I don’t care how close you move the dialog box to the cursor. That’s just plain stupid.

    You’ve granted us the ability to turn off the Evernote tie-in (which was illogical in the first place…surely you guys know that) but there’s still no local history. It’s a crippled program.

    I love Evernote but after seeing what you did to Skitch, I’m certainly looking for alternatives. You’ve very effectively demonstrated that you’re out of touch with your user-base and ignorant when it comes to good UI development.

    I paid for Skitch, use it all throughout my day…personal and professional use. I’m constantly hitting cmd-shift-5. I’m entirely grateful that you’ve made the original Skitch available, but how long before you flip the upgrade switch and close it down?

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