Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Using Sketchbook MobileX to write & draw on phone pix

Since it's kind of fun to write and draw on phone pix, I thought it'd be handy to do a quick tutorial on using the (currently) free Sketchbook MobileX on the iPhone since it's not the most intuitive app if you're not used to drawing programs in general. BTW, though I use an iPhone, Sketchbook is also available for Android.

When you open up the app, you get this screen:


Yup, just a white screen with a little cog at the bottom.  Hit the cog and a palette of options will open up:


The writing/drawing tools (pencil, airbrush, brush) are circled in orange. The color wheel is circled in purple. The layers options is circled in blue. The black arrows are pointing to the Undo (red arrow) and Redo (green arrow) options. And the green arrow is pointing to the option when you want to export your pic to the photo library or start a new sketch.

To draw on a picture, hit the layers option, and you'll get this screen:


Hit the plus sign with the flower behind it to import a pic from your photo library:


 The pic should pull up in the Layer Editor.  Then hit the Back button at the top:


You'll have your pic on your "canvas":


Hit the little cog at the bottom to pull up your options:


Select a writing/drawing tool --it will highlight in blue as above (I selected the brush).  Hit the color wheel and pick a color:


Now you'll probably want to change the brush size (the default on mine was HUGE).  Put your finger in the center of the the center option that's labeled "Brush Properties" and slide horizontally to adjust brush size (sliding vertically adjusts opacity).


Hit the cog (to make the palette of options disappear) and start drawing/writing.  If you want to hit the Undo key, you'll have to hit the cog and pull up the palette of options.  BTW, hitting the eraser tool here will not just erase writing, it erases the picture--this eraser tool is more handy when you're doing multiple layers.   When you're done, hit the cog again and hit the "+" in the upper left corner to export your new pic to save it in the photo library.


Ta da!  This is the gist of drawing/writing on pictures with Sketchbook MobileX!  It may take a little trial and error the first time you're using this app, but it's pretty easy once you know how to pull stuff up and adjust color and size.  Play around with it--there's plenty more you can do with this app!

2 comments:

  1. this app is crazy. to pick a color itself is LAME_O hard. like why isn't there just a color spectrum and you touch where u want the color to be? all that sliding the thing to pick the shade and lightness is annoying. that app is hard to use. i think it'd work better if you used a stylus too. the edges of the pen tool aren't clean at all.

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