There are a couple of phrases that I’ve used to describe Plasq’s Skitch since I got a private beta invite about a month and a half ago. Amazing. Awesome. Totally awesome. Completely brain-shatteringly inconceivably awesome. Insanely great (well, okay, that wasn’t my phrase, but it’s still a good description). Once you’ve played with Skitch for ten minutes, you’ll be convinced that you are using the best image capturing, annotating, and sharing app on the planet, and that the next runner-up doesn’t even appear for a nanosecond to come close.

First off with Skitch is the user interface. Forget everything that you’ve come to expect from a Mac OS X user interface, because Skitch completely breaks every rule. When you’re not using it, Skitch is completely free from sight. To show Skitch, either click on the heart icon in the menubar and/or the dock (you can choose to have the icon in the menubar, the dock, or both). If the menubar icon is on, Skitch will glide down gracefully from its resting point up there, otherwise, Skitch spends its off time as a minimized window in the Dock. Like a brushed metal window, you can move the window by dragging any portion of the Skitch window’s frame, however if you want to resize the window, you can choose ANY of the four corners to resize the Skitch window (more on resizing below). Around the main part of the window (which contains the image) are all of the tools you need. Clicking on the hammer and wrench button in the upper left shows the entire Skitch menu. If you want to set Preferences, the Skitch window will “flip” around to the back. Clicking on the yellow - button will close/minimize the window. In addition, if you hover over certain objects, a tooltip will show up above the window to tell you what it does. A two year old could figure Skitch out, if he/she knew how to read!

As someone who chats with people, helps people figure out how to do things, and also edits enhanced album artwork for a podcast, I’ve been using Mac OS X’s built-in Shift-Command-4 for years for taking a screenshot of a part of the screen and saving it as an image file. That is, until I found Skitch. I’ll never go back to doing that Shift-Command-4 thing ever again. From any application, you can do Shift-Command-5 to take a “Crosshairs snapshot”. When you do this, you’ll be able to see visible crosshairs that move as you move your mouse to show you precisely where the upper-left corner of your snapshot will start. When you click and drag, the entire screen goes dark except for the part you’re snapping, so you can easily see what will result. If you hold down Shift while selecting the area, Skitch will wait 3 seconds (with a Photo Booth-esque countdown) until it takes the snapshot. Your snapshot then appears in Skitch. A full screen snapshot is really easy: Shift-Command 6.

There are other ways to get images into Skitch as well. If you have an iSight camera (or any camera that’s iChat-compatible), open Skitch, press the Cam button, pose, click Snap, and smile! Skitch takes your picture just like Photo Booth does. Another way to take a screenshot is to do Shift-Command-7. This will allow you to position the Skitch window over the screen exactly how you want it, and then click Snap when you’re ready to take a snapshot of exactly what shows up beneath the window. You can also throw existing images into Skitch. Clicking the Photos button will flip Skitch around and show your iPhoto library/albums–double-clicking on a picture will load it into the Skitch window to mess with it. Alternatively, you can drag and drop any image file onto the Skitch window.

One of the biggest things about Skitch is that it makes editing images easy and fun, from the practical stuff to the silly stuff. The way you resize the image is really simple: just resize the Skitch window. The image that you see will be the same size as the image you output. (Really large images will offer an “Export at original size” option at the bottom, which will ignore any resizing you’ve done.) Cropping is easy as well. If you hover the mouse over the edge of the image, you’ll see it show a white border. You can then click and drag this white border to crop the image, just like that. At the bottom of the window, you can quickly name the file and choose a format. And, of course you can draw. One of the cool things about Skitch is that each individual drawing is a separate object that you can drag around. If you use the eraser in between a drawing, it splits it into two separate objects. It’s probably the most intelligent drawing software I’ve seen; most of the ones I’ve used take a stance of once you’ve drawn it, it’s permanent. Adding text to the image couldn’t be easier: just start typing. The text will show up, and you can then move it, resize it, do what you want to it. As a rule, text always shows up above other drawings.

Skitch does not save files, per se. However, do you see that “drag me” button at the bottom? By clicking on it and dragging it (duh), Skitch will automatically create the image file exactly as you’ve set it, and you can do what you want with it. You can drag it to a Mail window and create a new attachment, drop it in a chat, or drop it in the Finder to create a conventional image file. Skitch also has a companion image-hosting service called mySkitch. All you have to do to upload your image to mySkitch is click on the “webpost” button. Skitch will upload the image to mySkitch, and the button becomes a pulsing “Share!” button. Click on that to see your hosted image, then copy one of the URLs to share it on a forum, blog, or just with a friend. Skitch’s webpost button is also compatible with Flickr, .Mac, or any FTP/SFTP connection.

Skitch also keeps a running history of all files that you’ve drag me’d and webposted. However, if you want to save an image to Skitch history without doing either of those things, click on the Save button on the upper-right. After any of those things have been done, you can get back to the image by clicking on the History button–Skitch will automatically update the images in history from then on.

All in all, Skitch is an amazing app that you have to try to believe. I absolutely love it for doing anything from fun stuff to serious stuff. Heck, I used Skitch to create my Leopard W avatar by cropping it out of the Webmacster87.info logo that Hans made and resizing it to a number of appropriate sizes. Now, Skitch is in private beta, but if you want to try it, I have more than 20 Skitch invites left that I’m just dying to give away. Make a post in the comments below, and I’ll send one to the e-mail address you specify while supplies last!

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Tags: image editing, invites, Mac, Plasq, review, screenshots, sharing, Skitch, Software