Over the summer, I read that Skitch (recently acquired by Evernote) was in the works as a native app for the iPad and I became interested in it, since I thought it could simplify my life. As a huge Evernote fan, I had high hopes that Skitch would become another app that I'd use on an almost daily basis. Naturally, I had to give it a shot right upon its release. Unfortunately, upon initial launch, the long-awaited app had disappointed me with an error message, prompting a restart. Was this indicative of what was to follow? Read on to find out.
Thankfully, my false start was not indicative of Skitch for iPad's quality. Despite its surprising crash upon launch (running iOS 5 on an iPad 2), and a responsible follow-up upon relaunch asking if I'd like to report the error (yes, I did), the rest of my experience was quite positive.
Skitch is awesome because it serves one main purpose (annotating content) and it does it pretty damn well. What kind of content, you ask? Photos, screenshots, web sites, maps, and just about anything else that you can think of importing as either a photo or in the formats it supports. If you're looking for a simple drawing app, it may suffice as well although it is more basic than many of the other drawing apps out there.
Skitch is a powerful tool for graphic designers, programmers, architects, and basically anyone needing to annotate something quickly and possibly share it with others via Twitter or email. In addition to its sharing options, Skitch rocks because it integrates beautifully with Evernote, as you'd expect. As a strong supporter of Evernote, I'm instantly drawn to any app that integrates with it, and I'm pleased to mention that Skitch does so flawlessly.
Another charming point about Skitch is its super user friendly interface. The main screen brings up the options you have for importing content to be annotated or the ability to create a blank page which you may also mark up as elegantly (or chaotically) as you desire. Recently-accessed mark-ups appear on this screen as well, enabling for quick access and re-editing.
Once content is selected, your screen shows an uninterrupted view of the content (a map, a web site, photo, or etc.), which only shares space with a thin toolbar that appears to the left of the content. This toolbar contains all the essentials for sharing and annotating data. For annotation, it contains simple shapes (a circle and rectangle), lines, arrows, text fields, a selection tool, a cropping tool, a text tool, and arrows. While I hope that future revisions to the app will incorporate support for new shapes, font customization (like its companion desktop app), and more choices of lines and arrows, I feel the tools that are included are sufficient for most purposes (after all, it is not marketed as a graphic design app). The app is very effective for what it's intended to do and will likely save you lots of time when marking up content because it is so simple to use.
I especially enjoyed the ability to take snapshots of web sites and Google maps, annotate them, and share them with others via email or Twitter. These tasks would take much longer if a snapshot had to be taken, then imported into a graphics app, then exported manually to share. By combining these features and offering a snappy, quick means of achieving such tasks, Skitch has won me over. Having said that, I'd only give it a "4" must-have rating if it had font customization, and a wider selection of colors and shapes. I suspect that future revisions to the app will incorporate these features, but for now, it's worthy of a 3 although a "high" 3. Also, it'd be nice if the app provided PDF support which comes with fancier, more expensive apps like iAnnotate. Even so, this app is one that can be extremely useful to many users and is a steal at its all-time low cost of zero dollars. I encourage you to visit the App Store and download your copy today!
