WHAT S NEW 1. Perspective Guides 2. Flipbook Animation 3. Gradient Flood Fills 4. Layer Workflow Enhancements - Layer Grouping - Extended Blending Modes - Background Color - Multi-Layer Select 5. Distort Transform 6. Move Symmetric Axis 7. Increased Canvas Sizes 8. Selection Enhancements 9. Improved Color Wheel 10. Improved Crop tool 11. Brush Enhancements 12. Performance Enhancements
1 Perspective Guides The SketchBook team worked closely with Concept Designer, Scott Robertson to develop a powerful new tool to quickly and accurately sketch in perfect perspective. 1-point, 2-point, 3-point and Fisheye modes are available in a clean and intuitive interface that doesn t impede the sketch or clutter up the SketchBook environment. Perspective Contextual Toolbar A lot of the features added in this release can be found in the main toolbar. Some of these items, when selected, will open a contextual toolbar. The Perspective toolbar contains the items listed below. A 1-Point Perspective Creates a vanishing point in the center of the canvas. The brush cursor, in perspective mode, will change to a 3-axis cross hair, rotating relative to the vanishing point. You can drag the center vanishing point to reposition the vanishing point and horizon. 2
1 Perspective Guides B 2-Point Perspective Creates 2 vanishing points, on the horizon for quick and easy grid layouts. Vanishing points can be pulled far off of the canvas for less drastic view points. The horizon can be adjusted and positioned at any angle. C 3-point Perspective Creates 3 vanishing points, a horizon line (blue) and triangle connecting the three points (light blue). 3-point perspective is a very useful and straight forward tool for an otherwise difficult perspective layout. 3
1 Perspective Guides D Fisheye Perspective Creates 5 vanishing points: left, right, top, bottom, and center. The grid is composited of a horizon line, vertical line, and circle. Curves intersect at the vanishing points. Moving the center point moves the entire grid. Moving an edge point changes the circle s radius. A great asset for creating drastic wide-angle imagery. 4
2 Flipbook Animation This major release includes the first instance of flipbook style animation in the SketchBook product line. Users can now create simple Flipbook animations right inside the SketchBook environment. Flipbook Timeline Opening a new Flipbook file will reveal the Flipbook Timeline window. This is where all the actions required to create and navigate frames take place. The features, including frame creation, frame ghosting (onion skinning) and playback controls, are listed below. 5
2 Flipbook Animation File Setup When opening a new Flipbook file, choose from standard preset or custom file sizes, playback frame rate, and the number of frames in the animation sequence. Flipbook Layer Editor The Layer Editor in a Flipbook file has 4 static Layers. Background Color, Background, Midground, and Foreground. 6
3 Gradient Flood Fills Dynamic gradient fills are a feature carried over from SketchBook Designer. Users can now create linear and radial gradients with an intuitive interface that allows for adding and removing colors, adjusting color swatches on the spot with the pop-up color wheel, or selection and creation of preset gradients. Flood Fill Contextual Toolbar The Gradient toolbar now contains the standard solid flood fill tools, along with Linear and Radial options. Adjust fill tolerance, sample all layers or just the active layer, or flip gradient direction. 7
3 Gradient Flood Fills A Solid Fill A Linear Fill A Radial Fill 8
4 Layer Workflow Improvements A number of changes have been made to the usability of SketchBook, many of which occur within the Layer Editor. Users can now keep their projects organized with layer grouping, select multiple layers for intricate transform operations and reordering, flip to transparent background, or choose from an expanded list of layer blending Modes. A Layer Grouping Layers can now be grouped, and groups of layers can be grouped up to 9 levels. This workflow allows users to keep their work organized, transform, adjust opacity, toggle visibility of groups and maintain layer groups when working back and forth with other graphic packages, like Photoshop. The Layer window can now to resized to accommodate the width of the new g roup stacking. 9
4 Layer Workflow Improvements B Expanded Blending Modes The list of blending modes available in the new SketchBook Pro has been lengthened greatly, with some of the popular modes that users have come to expect, like Overlay, Color Burn, Linear Dodge and others. Glow and Soft Glow modes were created to really add some pop to your sketches. 6 Multi-Layer Selection The SketchBook team worked closely with Concept Designer, Scott Robertson to develop a powerful new tool to quickly and accurately sketch in perfect perspective. 1-point, 2-point, 3-point and Fisheye modes are avalailable in a clean and intuitive interface that doesn t impede the sketch or clutter up the SketchBook environment. 10
4 Layer Workflow Improvements C Background Color You can now easily select a background color directly in the Layer Editor. Clicking the color preview will open the Color Wheel, complete with Color Picker and preset colors. Simply turn off the visibility of the background layer to switch to a transparent canvas for transparent PNG or GIF exports. C Multi-Layer Select You can now select multiple layers or groups of layers for more accurate transform operations, without the need to replicate the transform for each layer. Reposition a series of layers into one convenient location. 11
5 Distort Transform A new method for transform has been added to the SketchBook Pro interface, in addition to the standard transform mode our users have become accustomed to. Distort Transform is another feature carried over from SketchBook Designer. A very simple, yet potent, tool allow you to adjust layers and selections in ways not previously possible within SketchBook. Distort Contextual Toolbar The Distort Toolbar has options for Standard Transform and Distort Transform using the newly implemented corner manipulator interface. Simply click and drag a corner, or bounding line to adjust scale, non-proportional scale, or sculpt your selection with the Distort workflow, and manipulate the image with the central bias manipulator. 12
6 Move Symmetric Axis A minor change in the Symmetry tool makes a big difference. Users are no longer locked to a symmetric axis at the centre of the canvas. X and Y symmetry can now be positioned anywhere on the canvas. The Symmetry tool now has its own contextual toolbar with the features contained listed below. Symmetry Contextual Toolbar 7 Increased Canvas Sizes This release sees an increase in the maximum canvas size that can be created. 32-bit versions of SketchBook Pro now support canvas sizes up to 36MP and 64-bit versions support up to 64MP. 8 Selection Enhancements Selection within SketchBook Pro has been greatly improved with this release. With the addition of Polyline and Magic Wand Selection methods, users have a greater range of control when making selections. Persistent Selection now allows you to change layers and brushes while maintaining the selection. You can now paint within an active selection, in a workflow similar to masking. 13
9 Improved Color Wheel Many users loved the addition of the Color Wheel that launched with SketchBook Pro 6. The new Color Wheel features a collapsible Custom Palette and custom gradient Palette, when using the Gradient Flood Fill tools. We ve also added a toggle to switch the brush color to transparent, turning any brush into an eraser in this convenient location. 10 Improved Crop Tool The new Crop tool allows you to resize images with to-the-pixel accuracy. The Crop contextual toolbar now offers input fields, for Width and Height values, Proportional Lock, Confirm,and Cancel options. 11 Brush Enhancements A lot of work was put in to maintain the brush feel of SketchBook, while enhancing brush performance. Maximum brush stamps have increased to a 512px radius. A new brush tip option, Sharp, has also been added to the Brush Properties window. 12 Performance Enhancements SketchBook now features an Auto Recovery system that will protect data in the event of a system crash, and will open the active file automatically upon relaunch. 14