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.

 

Skitch with transparency

 

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;

 

 

 

 

 

 


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:


The Option/Alt key has various uses depending on the current tool:


The Shift key has various uses depending on the current tool: