Annotation editor

The annotation editor lets you add freehand strokes, shapes, arrows and text to a snip before you save, copy or share it. The on-screen preview and the saved image come from the same code, so what you see on screen is exactly what ends up in the saved image.

Opening the editor

Right-click a floating snip or a gallery card and choose Annotate (hint: draw). A separate window titled Annotate opens, centred on the monitor under your pointer.

On Windows the editor stays on top and opens above your floating snips, so it never hides behind the snip you are marking up. The snip fills the canvas in the middle of the window, with a tool strip above it and an action strip below.

Only one editor can be open at a time. If you choose Annotate on another snip while the open editor has unsaved strokes, Snipdeck brings the open editor to the front and asks you to finish or cancel it first.

Tools

The top strip holds seven drawing tools, shown as icons only. Click one to select it; the active tool is highlighted.

With the pen and highlighter, press and drag across the canvas to draw. For rectangle, ellipse, line and arrow, press where the shape should start and drag to the opposite corner or end point; the shape updates as you move. Stray clicks that do not make a shape are discarded.

Adding text

Choose the text tool with the A button, then click where the text should start. A caret appears there in the active colour. Type your label and press Enter to commit it. Switching to another tool before committing drops the text. If you press Save before committing, Snipdeck places the typed text first and then saves.

Text is drawn in the system’s bold sans-serif font and rendered into the image at full resolution when you save.

Colour: the HSV wheel

Click the colour chip at the right end of the top strip to open the colour panel. It opens just below the strip and lets you pick any colour rather than one from a fixed palette.

• HSV colour wheel: hue runs around the wheel and saturation grows from the centre (grey) to the edge (fully saturated). Click or drag anywhere on the wheel to pick hue and saturation; a ring marks the current choice.
• Brightness slider: the slider below the wheel, marked with a sun icon, sets the colour’s value from 0 (black) to full brightness.

The colour chip and the text caret reflect your choice at once. Clicking the canvas closes the panel.

Size and opacity

The bottom strip holds a size slider (marked with a pen icon) and an Opacity slider, each with its value beside it.

Both settings are kept per tool, so each tool keeps its own feel as you switch between them. Every time the editor opens, it starts from these defaults:

The size slider sets the width on screen. As soon as a stroke is drawn, its width is stored in the snip’s real pixels; zooming in or out afterwards only changes the on-screen magnification, not the saved width.

Size preview

While you drag the size or opacity slider, a dot in the current size, colour and opacity blinks at the centre of the image, so you can judge the brush against the snip underneath. The preview disappears when you release the slider.

Zoom and pan

The zoom control sits in the bottom-right corner of the canvas, outside the strips.

Zoom is limited to between 0.2× and 6× of the fit scale. The percentage label shows the effective magnification against the snip’s real pixels: a large snip scaled down to fit may show 48%, while a snip that opens 1:1 shows 100%. When you zoom past the canvas size, the canvas becomes scrollable.

Undo, redo and cancel

Every committed shape is tracked, so you can step back and forth freely.

The shortcuts work whenever you are not typing a text label.

Cancel, Esc and the window’s close button all ask first when there is something unsaved: Discard your annotations? Keep editing, Esc or a click outside the box takes you back to the editor; only Discard throws the strokes away. With nothing to lose, the editor closes without asking.

Saving: rendered at full resolution

Click Save to bake your annotations into the snip. Shapes and text are rendered into the image at the snip’s own pixel size, whatever zoom you drew at.

The rendered image replaces the snip’s image: the floating window and the gallery thumbnail both show the marked-up version. The snip’s pixel size does not change.

While a snip is open in the editor, Snipdeck will not rotate, flip or crop it; it asks you to finish or cancel the editor first, so saving never overwrites another change.

Keyboard shortcuts

See also

• Floating snips: move, crop and rotate the snips you annotate
• Collage editor: combine several snips into one image
• Sharing and export: copy, save, send or upload an annotated snip
• Keyboard and mouse shortcuts: the full shortcut reference