Friday, March 27, 2015

Napkin, the best annotation app for Mac, just got better!

Napkin, the best annotation app for Mac, just got better!

Forget Skitch: My favorite screenshot annotation app is Aged and Distilled's Napkin.

Not only does Napkin let you annotate single screenshots, but you can also arrange multiple Retina-quality screenshots on a single canvas and export them accordingly. That might sound like niche software, but it's essential for those of us who need to annotate screenshots for articles, books, interface review, and other jobs involving design or production. Its latest updated, version 1.5, adds a bunch of must-have annotation features including redacting images, cropping them, and new arrow and fill shape styles.

Napkin's been a favorite since I started at iMore and now it's even more useful in my day to day. Before this update, I had two complains with Napkin: it had an annoying tendency to slow down when open for too long, and it couldn't redact screenshots. Both of those nitpicks are vanquished in 1.5: Memory leaks have been plugged, scrolling is faster, and there are three different types of redaction available now.

You can also crop images within Napkin, rather than having to pre-crop them beforehand — a huge boon for tweaking iPhone screenshots — and add rectangular outlines to images to create callouts. Previously, the only way to highlight an image was to draw a flat line around it or drop one of Napkin's circular callout atop it.

There are lots of other great Napkin features hanging about, including instant pixel measurement of heights and widths with the line tool; an instant PNG save pip, which lets you save a copy of the Napkin canvas as a PNG anywhere you drag the pip; a brand-new, clean, Yosemite interface; better handling of Retina images; and lots more.

We use Napkin for all our help and how-to articles on iMore, so if you've been reading us for any length of time, you've seen it in action. I'm really excited to use Napkin's new update in my day-to-day work; you can check out more on Aged and Distilled's website or pick up the full version from the Mac App store.

Disclosure: Longtime tech pals Guy English and Chris Parrish make up a large part of the Aged and Distilled team; friendship aside, however, they also make great software.











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