Pencils? With Moleskine Evernote?

[ihavegills 2]

I'm used to using pencils instead of pens and I'm just beginning the moleskine notebooks for evernote. I suppose I will find out but I have taken to Blackwings (softer and darker lead)--I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this, I'd think it would be okay if they advertise the sketchbooks. They say "dark ink" so hopefully "dark lead" will work.

[Candid 167]

I don't see why not. The only concern with pencil (and probably more so with softer ones) is smearing. If you use your camera to photo scan you won't have a problem. On the other hand, using a scanner might cause some smearing. 

[Guest]

I'm used to using pencils instead of pens and I'm just beginning the moleskine notebooks for evernote. I suppose I will find out but I have taken to Blackwings (softer and darker lead)--I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this, I'd think it would be okay if they advertise the sketchbooks. They say "dark ink" so hopefully "dark lead" will work.

 

Pencils should work just fine as long as the writing is dark enough to be captured when taking a picture. A pen is recommend though, but if you press a bit harder with a pencil you should be good to go. 

[andybatt 0]

Hi --

I was given a dotted moleskine "special" evernote sketchbook for xmas—have to say that while the notebook is just as good as any of my other moleskine notebooks, the service and software is completely underwhelming and frustrating.

I use Mirado Black Warrior pencils to sketch with -- it's an nice inexpensive pencil that works for me. A lot of my sketches have some shading in them as well. 

Using either the Evernote IOS app or the Scannable app, the camera has only two modes: un-processed or over-processed (aka auto aka document aka moleskine special mode). Un-processed preserves a decent amount of detail, but does nothing to clean up the photo, and is essentially removing any of the "special sauce" that makes the moleskine notebook different. Over-processed tries to remove any gray tones and compresses the image so that the result is a horribly ugly useless image—it does use the grid to clean up the lines.

In short, the moleskine mode is useless for pencil sketches.

Evernote could improve this by offering some degree customization: let me control the contrast ratio, the compression, the 'cleanup', the white balance. Let me create a custom preset that is easily repeatable, that takes advantage of the moleskine grid feature, and lets me put these sketches directly into the notebook where they belong.

I can go the long way around here: I can use Snapseed to photograph my sketches, tweak their values, straighten and correct perspective, and then save them to dropbox and then go bulk transfer them into Evernote, and then launch Evernote to move them into the correct notebook. But way too many steps.

For now I'll go back to a plain black moleskine, and use the normal camera mode.

I will continue to use Evernote, and pay for the Premium service because for all it's shortcomings (seriously? no single page find-and-replace?) it's still a really useful tool. I will not be buying any more expensive Evernote Edition Moleskins—those stickers are not worth the extra $.

[washbear 5]

I had my kids try this with Prismacolor colored pencils for their science projects and it did not work well.  Your best bet is sticking with black ink.

 

eta:  I should mention that we used the Kindle HD 7 (2014 version) camera, which may or may not work as well as the cameras on other devices.

[macneilpi 34]

I don't have fancy sketches to save, but for all of the letters, documents, identification cards and certificates I save, the document scanner works well. I save both versions of ID cards in the event they are lost while traveling. 

I use the EN Notebook for the ease of capturing the handwritten notes and I use the stickers to effectively categorize my notes in volumes. I will admit the it's less about the stickers and more about the free premium that comes with the slightly more expensive Moleskine Notebook