Sketch 2 overview

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The current incarnation of Sketch is the third attempt by Pieter Omvlee to create his own graphics editor. Before that, there were DrawIt and the first Sketch, which failed to win the hearts of representatives of the design community.

Unlike Pixelmator comrades, Sketch doesn't even try to play Photoshop, being initially a rather highly specialized tool intended for website and application interface developers. Those. it will not work to portray a tough photographer with his help (those who like to spoil pictures with filters can continue to enjoy "Analog") …

The possibilities of the application are pleasantly surprising. If you want rectangles with a dynamically changeable rounding radius - please. Non-destructive work with forms is easy. Four types of strokes per object? Live filters? Visual work with gradients?

An order of magnitude more expensive Photoshop blushes shyly in the corner. Drawing the same vector primitives together with the pixel preview and competent snapping to the pixel grid is done, perhaps, even better than the illustrator. How about a quick export of the retina version? In a word, the claim for success is more than serious.

Why am I reminded of Adobe products? For example, because drawing even the simplest interfaces in Pixelmator or Acorn (I often don't even want to mention the rest) is akin to shaving with a shovel: you can, but only if there is no alternative at all. Even when choosing between Photoshop CS5 and Sketch for rendering small graphics, the choice will not always be in favor of the former.

Sketch's interface is pretty quirky. On the one hand, an ingenious grouping of objects (grouped layers - got a "folder"), the absence of 100,500 panels and a lot of nice little things (like RGBA color, color picker, the ability to copy object attributes in the form of CSS). On the other hand, there is a strange behavior of the inspector, as if specifically striving to remove the currently needed tab, a strange decision with switching the fill type, or not very well thought out work with zoom and textures. In general, the experience of the interface is positive, especially against the background of the first version of the program or its analogues.

Now about the sad things. For all the many advantages of Sketch, it has a huge disadvantage, bugs. Thousands of them. Either the outline of the object "suddenly" disappears, then the shadow appears on the opposite side, then the "garbage" pixels will climb, then undo cancels out what should not be … The number of bugs can surprise even an experienced Creative Suite user. During the work Sketch has repeatedly collapsed, which, however, did not affect the integrity of the data (which was regularly auto-saved).

What is the bottom line? A highly specialized editor of interface graphics, excellent for its price, which can already be used for real work, and after the treatment of diseases of youth it will be able to clash with heavyweights.

My weekly attempts to use Sketch exclusively in my work have not been successful, although, judging by the examples available on Dribbble, not everyone shares my cautious pessimism.

Download on the Mac App Store: Sketch 2

Price: $49.99

Official site: Bohemian Coding

Requirements: OS X 10.6 or later, 64-bit processor