Skitch

If you have an image with a transparent background, there’s a nifty trick for you to use in Skitch… you want to read this.

Let’s say you have an image that you’ve created with a transparent background.
Perhaps you’re creating a new logo for a product launch, like this one:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

If we drag and drop the transparent background .png file into Skitch we end up with a logo on a white background, like this:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

To add transparency to the .png in Skitch (yes, it’s a hack, we’re sorry) do the following:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

If you then Shift + Click the color chooser, you get the following:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Now your image has a transparent background in Skitch.

OK kids, feel free to play around…

You have a file that is 1600 x 1200 pixels large. Maybe it’s a photo from your digital camera or an image you created in a photo editor or vector illustration software tool. Either way, it’s a big sucker.

You want to use Skitch to do something with that file. Maybe you want to resize the image. Or, maybe you want to keep it at the original size because you want to let your audience see all the details you lovingly crafted into it.

When you load your large image into Skitch, you may see that Skitch has decided to show you a version of the image that is at a reduced size compared to your original.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

This is usually because the display area that Skitch can “sense” on your monitor is smaller than the original image size. This makes sense, because how can you display a 1600 x 1200 image at the original size if you only have 1280 x 1024 pixels of available space to show the image within?

The solution to this conundrum is simple. Check the “Export at original size” box.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

After checking the box, when you now use “Drag me” or Webpost to save your image, the image saved or uploaded will be at the original size that you wanted.

Bam! You are done, now go play!

UPDATE:
Amelia says…
“THAT WOULD BE GREAT… but it <Export at original size> doesn’t show up for me!
http://skitch.com/amelia/m3ad/skitch

What this mean…
If the “Export at original size” is not visible, this means that Skitch thinks your image can be shown at 100% within your visible screen.

To force the image to be visible at 100%, do this…
1) Hold down Shift
2) Click on any of the 4 corners of the Skitch window.

Alternatively you can just drag any corner until the image is at 100%

Do you ever need to build How-To pages on a Wiki or other website?

You might want to try what Nick did here… fast, to the point and done in 10 minutes.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

See the JRubyWiki pages that Nick built.

Skitch has a built-in Photo Browser that automatically detects your iPhoto library when you first install Skitch. This is a very handy/fast way to access your photo library for quick editing and annotation of images with Skitch.

But what happens if you keep images *outside* of iPhoto for some reason? As you might expect, there is a really simply solution that might just make you dance with glee.

Step 1)
Open Skitch and click the “Photos” button.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Step 2)
Open Finder, locate the image folder that you want to add to Skitch. Drag and drop your “other” image folder into the Photo Browser Window.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Bam! You’re done. Now go play.

Scanning keywords on the internetawebatron the other day I spotted this tweet:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

The link leads to a map of the local area, from a local’s perspective, intended to help friends locate a “good” area to dwell for the summer.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Skitch has so many uses… what have *you* come up with?