I like Skitch. However, after the move to Evernote and the release of a new Mac app, Skitch didn’t exactly go through a “smooth” transition. Namely, features were removed, and existing Skitch users weren’t thrilled with the new Evernote-only nature of the software. Last month, Evernote published a blog post detailing how, after receiving lots of feedback from their users, they decided removing functionalities people had become dependent upon was a bad move. For the past few weeks, I have been testing the 2.0.3 update to Skitch for Mac, which brings back many of the features that made the original Skitch one of my favorite Mac apps.
A feature that I’ve been using on a daily basis is FTP support. In Skitch 1.0, you could take a screenshot, quickly annotate it, and send it off to your own server via FTP. I share a lot of screenshots, and I like the combination of an easy-to-use image annotation app with my own server and my own URLs. FTP integration was the right balance between Skitch’s annotations (which I prefer to Apple’s ones in Preview) and the power of putting images on a server that’s only mine. Skitch 2.0.3 adds a new FTP/sFTP option in the Sharing tab of the Preferences, allowing you to configure multiple FTP accounts. The configuration is similar to other FTP clients for Mac (you’ll find the usual Base URL, port, and directory settings) and it took me a minute to set up with my credentials.
Once configured, you’ll be able to send images from Skitch directly to your FTP server. Unfortunately, there’s no option to assign keyboard shortcuts to a specific FTP account, so you’ll have to click on Share > FTP or right-click an image to upload via FTP. Personally, I’ve set up a Keyboard Maestro macro that uses AppleScript GUI scripting to let me share via FTP easily with just a keystroke.
An updated sharing menu is available both from the menu bar and the Skitch image editor. From the latter, an arrow in the upper right corner reveals a dropdown menu with options for email, Messages, Twitter, Facebook, and iPhoto. You can also set a picture as desktop background, or set the kind of link that you want to generate from Skitch. More ways to share Skitch links now include direct image URL, HTML code, HTML thumbnails, and forum code. In addition to more sharing options, the new Skitch comes with an Auto Copy feature as well, allowing you to automatically place a link to a Skitch image (shared publicly) in the clipboard.
Aside from various improvements and bug fixes, other features I like include timed screenshots and custom styles. In the tools palette of the editor, you can now set a custom color for your annotations, choose between preset sizes from the same color swatch, or define your own size by manually adjusting the blue dots of the marquee around text and shapes. For me, this alone is a welcome improvement that is still easy to use and doesn’t add complexity to the editing interface of Skitch. I don’t use this functionality with Skitch, but version 2.0.3 introduces timed screenshots, letting you perfectly time areas to capture with a countdown timer.
I’m looking forward to more updates from the Evernote team on Skitch. After a series of initial missteps – possibly dictated by a need to release the app – it’s good to see features coming back, sometimes in different forms, to Skitch, which remains my favorite app for screenshot annotations on the Mac. Skitch 2.0.3 is available today on Evernote’s website.
