You may remember a couple posts I wrote about an ideal sketching app. (Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE) The gist of what I wanted was an app that does not require you to save your file somewhere on the hard drive before or while youre working, it just saves it automagically as a thumbnail in a library for you. Well, I found an app recently that does this very thing, and get this – its FREE! Its called Sketchbox and it is pretty darn good. (LINK)
Its advertised as a Stickies replacement, but that makes it sound too limited and boring. Yeah, you can type notes on the “stickies” in Sketchbox, but you can also draw on them with a pretty good, although limited marker/eraser tool. You open a new sticky, draw on it, then close it and its saved in your library, just like I wanted! Simple as that. No file naming, finding the right folder to sort it in, etc. Just draw and youre done. You can also take a screenshot with a sticky and use that as a background for it, so if you wanted to draw notes or ideas on top of something, just click the camera, take the screenshot, then start drawing on it. Pretty great. You can also save your drawing out as a .png with an alpha channel, so it can act as a springboard to the big boy apps too.
All its missing to be the perfect sketching app is a bit more refined options with the marker and eraser. If the opacity could be set to wacom pressure, and maybe a brush with feathered edges, and also an eraser with these same options then I’d be super happy. But as the drawing tool stands it gets the job done. There is also an alarm feature that I cant imagine myself using, but other than that its a great study in a well made, simple, focused app. Go check it out for yourself!