Skitch 2.5.x still missing 1.x options, please put them back

[dekekincaid 1]

Skitch 2.x is slowly getting there.  Still has a few key features missing from 1.x.  You really should make it super fast to use.  1 click options, not 3-5 clicks like it has become.  Lots of hotkeys please!  I'll bring up my previous points from the fall I brought up on the other complaint lists.  Plus many other low hanging fruit now that you did conquer some of the worst ones.  Please put back the following:

 

1. Easily crop and resize an image by simply moving the edges or pulling the corner to resize.  Current method is like photoshop, clunky!  This is still huge: resize, 4+clicks: click crop button, click on resize button, move size slider it, hit apply.  Same with crop, current one takes 3 clicks: crop button, move crop, hit apply. (thank you for fixing the lame crop box being small in the middle of the screen which was useless!).

2. Quickly change the color of arrows & shapes lines.  Current method is make shape, click on colorpot, pick a color, click off colorpot.  Before it was a quick acess item on the side which when you hovered over the color it would auto pop up, you pick a color, done! 

 

3. Shift dragging arrows & lines on creation locked them to 45 degree angles.

 

4. Shift+drag while creating & resizing shapes locked proportional scale.

5. ctrl + 5 just did a screen capture before.  Can I please have an preference for it to simply auto capture rather then having to hit the "capture" button every time?  I never use the reposition options and usually over capture and just use crop to fix.

6. simple percentage resize option

 

7. Eraser missing?  Also the ctrl hotkey to quickly turn it on.

 

8. Fill tool missing for shapes

 

9. No "clear" or "wipe" option.  Clear is if I just want to quickly do a white board with someone and don't want to open up photoshop.  Wipe is if I want to use the same image to do another draw over.  Yes I realize I can select everything and delete but thats many clicks, not 1 click.

 

10. Text:

  a. Still no font options for the text tool?

  b. Can change text color after it is created

  c. Black text only when you turn off the text outline (I realize this wasn't even a 1.x option, still annoying though)

 

Additional requests (not in 1.x)

 

1. Hotkey to resize the thickness of arrows& shapes.  where I can
hotkey drag over a shape to change it interactively.  Current method is make a shape, click on color pot, pick a size, click off pot to make it go away.  3 clicks when it could be a simple 1 click.

[klang 38]

Hi dekekincaid,

 

Thanks for the thoughtful list. Let me try to address these below…

 

 

Skitch 2.x is slowly getting there.  Still has a few key features missing from 1.x.  You really should make it super fast to use.  1 click options, not 3-5 clicks like it has become.  Lots of hotkeys please!  I'll bring up my previous points from the fall I brought up on the other complaint lists.  Plus many other low hanging fruit now that you did conquer some of the worst ones.  Please put back the following:

 

Thanks. We're working hard, but realize there is still low hanging fruit to go fruit ninja on.

 

 

1. Easily crop and resize an image by simply moving the edges or pulling the corner to resize.  Current method is like photoshop, clunky!  This is still huge: resize, 4+clicks: click crop button, click on resize button, move size slider it, hit apply.  Same with crop, current one takes 3 clicks: crop button, move crop, hit apply. (thank you for fixing the lame crop box being small in the middle of the screen which was useless!).

 

 

 

We're working on this now. Resizing your canvas should be easier, soon-ish.

 

 

2. Quickly change the color of arrows & shapes lines.  Current method is make shape, click on colorpot, pick a color, click off colorpot.  Before it was a quick acess item on the side which when you hovered over the color it would auto pop up, you pick a color, done! 

 

Also working on this. We've some bigger plans here, so this is taking a little longer but will make things nicer and easier in the short and longer term.

 

 

3. Shift dragging arrows & lines on creation locked them to 45 degree angles.

 

This is coming very soon.

 

4. Shift+drag while creating & resizing shapes locked proportional scale.

 

Also coming very soon.

 

5. ctrl + 5 just did a screen capture before.  Can I please have an preference for it to simply auto capture rather then having to hit the "capture" button every time?  I never use the reposition options and usually over capture and just use crop to fix.

 

Coming very soon.

 

6. simple percentage resize option

 

 

Can you describe your workflow for this? Some improvements to zoom and dragme that are coming soon may make this obsolete/less-needed

 

7. Eraser missing?  Also the ctrl hotkey to quickly turn it on.

 

Eraser is a little tricker, since with 2.0 we moved to an "object" kind of model which gives the benefit of resizable arrows, shapes etc. It's definitely something I'd like to do, but would like to understand more about what you'd like to achieve.

 

 

8. Fill tool missing for shapes

 

 

Also on our to-do. 

 

9. No "clear" or "wipe" option.  Clear is if I just want to quickly do a white board with someone and don't want to open up photoshop.  Wipe is if I want to use the same image to do another draw over.  Yes I realize I can select everything and delete but thats many clicks, not 1 click.

 

Are you after the 1.x style 'erase all drawing' here? This is the first request I think I've seen for that, so I can put that on a todo.

 

 

10. Text:

  a. Still no font options for the text tool?

  b. Can change text color after it is created

  c. Black text only when you turn off the text outline (I realize this wasn't even a 1.x option, still annoying though)

 

So far we've gone with the single san serif font approach to maintain the document appearance across platforms. Is this important to you? More and better text control is definitely on our to-do

 

Additional requests (not in 1.x)

 

1. Hotkey to resize the thickness of arrows& shapes.  where I can
hotkey drag over a shape to change it interactively.  Current method is make a shape, click on color pot, pick a size, click off pot to make it go away.  3 clicks when it could be a simple 1 click.

 

 

Faster interactions with shape properties is on our to-do. 

 

I hope this helps, and welcome any more feedback, particularly as nicely listed as this.

 

It's tricky for me to be more exact about timing, but almost everything you've listed is on our radar, if not being worked on as we speak.

[dekekincaid 1]

Awesome, glad many of these are on your list.  I've been slowly moving back to skitch.  I had given up on it back when 2.0 came out because it lost most of the important functionality for (no offense) pretty gimmick features. This made other tools like Jing, Monosnap and Napkin much more attractive and I gladly paid for them.  The releases in the last couple months have finally brough it back to where I can use it 50% of the time.  Almost there!

 

 

6. simple percentage resize option

 

 

Can you describe your workflow for this? Some improvements to zoom and dragme that are coming soon may make this obsolete/less-needed

 

 

 

I do this all the time where I capture 3 interfaces I'm doing a draw over but they are too large so I will scale the captures all 60% or 45% because I want them all to line up side by side and be exactly the same height or width.  Skitch 1.x would always show the % scale and then would let you switch to inputting a the % instead of having to type in the raw pixel values.  Personally I would read the % scale all the time when moving the scale slider because it is a simpler way to think about scaling.

 

 

 

 

7. Eraser missing?  Also the ctrl hotkey to quickly turn it on.

 

 

 

Eraser is a little tricker, since with 2.0 we moved to an "object" kind of model which gives the benefit of resizable arrows, shapes etc. It's definitely something I'd like to do, but would like to understand more about what you'd like to achieve.

 

 

 

Often I do this for doing a boolean of multiple shapes, making super quick thought bubbles with elipse + lines or encapsulating two areas in squares but I again want a boolean of the two without the overlap.  Also with arrows I want the arrow head but only section of the tail.  I could go on, lots of different uses.

 

 

 

9. No "clear" or "wipe" option.  Clear is if I just want to quickly do a white board with someone and don't want to open up photoshop.  Wipe is if I want to use the same image to do another draw over.  Yes I realize I can select everything and delete but thats many clicks, not 1 click.

 

 

Are you after the 1.x style 'erase all drawing' here? This is the first request I think I've seen for that, so I can put that on a todo.

 

 

Yes, the wipe button in the lower right corner of 1.x would erase the drawing.

 

 

 

10. Text:

  a. Still no font options for the text tool?

  b. Can change text color after it is created

  c. Black text only when you turn off the text outline (I realize this wasn't even a 1.x option, still annoying though)

 

So far we've gone with the single san serif font approach to maintain the document appearance across platforms. Is this important to you? More and better text control is definitely on our to-do

 

 

 

When you say "maintain document appearence across platforms", do you mean doing text on OSX, going to skitch on another machine in Windows and opening the same file and editing it again in Skitch?  I don't really see myself doing that.  If I did capture on one and open it on another I would be fine with the text becoming an uneditable vector or raster object if the font wasn't available.  Even if I do open an old slide and edit it I will often delete the text and start over.  Most of the time the only reason I'm moving slides between platforms is so I can do the initial capture on one machine and then on the mac I do the draw over and share the note.

[Adam Christianson 0]

Please add "infinite canvas" to this list. You used to be able to drag out an edge on an image to get more canvas to work with. This is essential for annotations where you want extra white space, say on the side, to place a note.

[Joe Lopez 108]

@Adam - That feature is in the works. 

[klang 38]

Thanks guys for the feedback. Keep watching for updates.