Advanced Tips
The Skitch Drawing Engine
The graphical engine underneath Skitch is very powerful. All drawing is vector, and supports input from graphics tablets. It also supports transparency when choosing your drawing color and when setting a colored background. An example of this is the highlighter yellow color, which is semi-transparent.
Snapping Entire Windows
If you are working on documentation, you will find Snapping entire application windows much easier by simply clicking on them (rather than click-and-dragging) when using Snap. Depending on what Preferences you have set, you can have Skitch add a border of transparency, a border of your desktop (no matter what is below the window!) or a border of white.

The Toolbox menu
Clicking on the Toolbox button on the Skitch frame opens a menu of advanced functions.
Here you can find many useful little functions;
- About Skitch
- Provide Skitch feedback
- Check for updates...
- Preferences
- Skitch Help
- New
- Open...
- Save to History
- Save As...
- Mail this Image... — This always sends a .jpg of the current Skitch view to your system preferred email application. The JPG format is used for maximum compatibility.
- Send to Bluetooth — Sends a .jpg file to the bluetooth device you choose. For example, you may like to send a map directly from Skitch to your mobile phone. The .jpg format is used for maximum compatibility
- Print...
- Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Select all, Duplicate — all relate to the drawing on top of the image
- Show Fonts — this lets you choose a font, choose a from all possible font sizes, and also toggle shadow and outline
- Fullscreen Snapshot
- Frame Snapshot — This allows you to take multiple shots with the current Skitch frame dimensions
- Re-Snap (Keep Pen) — This removes the Snap behind the pen,
and enters the Frame Snap mode of Skitch, which lets you replace the
background Snap without losing all your drawing work
- Flip
- Rotate 90º Clockwise
- Add Shadow to Image — This adds a drop shadow to the image and expands the image boundaries
- Set Snap to Normal Size — If you have resized the Snap, this returns it to the 100% size
- Crop Snap at Current Edges — If you Snapped more than you needed,
but now want to white space around your picture, you can use the
cropping border to reduce to the viewable size you want, use this
function, and then use the cropping borders to enlarge the view again.
Where there was image previously will now be white space.
- Wipe Snap only
Modifier keys
Modifier Keys are the keys like Shift, Command, Control, Option/Alt - they are
keys you press and hold while you press another key or click your
mouse, in order to do something special. The most common use is
Command(Apple)+C to copy and Command(Apple)+V to paste.
Often you will want to very quickly move between a lot of different
tools as you quickly sketch or annotate. Using the mouse in combination
with the modifier keys on your keyboard can make life easier. For
example, if you find yourself moving between using the pencil, and
moving shapes around, you will find the Command(Apple) key very handy.
Anytime you press and hold the Command(Apple) key your active tool will become the cursor. So you can easily draw and move things around without ever
needing to mouse over to the Toolbox.
If you watch the top title of Skitch then you will see lots of handy tips.
Here is the full list:
- Justype: If you want to create some text... just start typing!
- Holding Command(Apple) key makes the current tool the cursor
- Holding Ctrl makes the current tool become the eraser
- Pressing and holding the Spacebar lets you drag around everything, including the Snap under your drawing
- Pressing Tab will alternate between the pencil and your current tool
- Pressing ESC leaves text edit mode
The Option/Alt key has various uses depending on the current tool:
- With the cursor tool, holding Option/Alt will let you copy items when you drag them
- With the pencil tool, holding Option/Alt makes the current tool a color-picker eyedropper
- With the circle and rectangle tool, Option/Alt forces the the new shape to center
- With the eraser tool holding Option/Alt makes the current tool a color-picker eyedropper
- With the arrow tool you can draw an arrow facing the opposite direction
- With the paint bucket fill tool, you can have a eyedropper color picker
- Holding Option/Alt with the line tool lets you draw continuous connected lines, much like you may want to if creating a polygon
The Shift key has various uses depending on the current tool:
- With the cursor tool, you can select multiple objects
- With the pen tool, you can have less smoothing
- With the circle and rectangle, you get perfect shapes
- Holding Shift on the eraser tool creates a non-grouping fill. That is, the paint will not 'stick' lines together
- With the arrow and line tools, you can draw arrows in 45º increments
- Pressing Shift while choosing a color lets you set the background color of your Skitch
- Holding Shift when you perform the Snap will force a timed Snap
- When holding Shift on the sizing slider you can get continuous
sizings, rather than 5 discreet steps while pressing Ctrl on the
webpost button you can get a menu to quickly change the destination
location for your uploads