Inkpad 3.3.0

by Lindsay in Releases

Hi, it’s Lindsay with news of an exciting update for everyone who uses a Bluetooth keyboard with Inkpad. For this video I’m using my little Logitech Bluetooth keyboard, just so you know.

As always a list of keyboard shortcuts can be found by pressing and holding down the Command key.

Any regular shortcut user will notice right away that drawing tools have been added to the list. Oh yes, you can now press V for the Selection tool, P for the Pen tool and N for the Freehand tool. For the Eraser tool you’ll need to press Shift+E. The Add Anchor tool is + or, if like mine your keyboard doesn’t have a dedicated + button, you’ll need to hold down the Shift key as well. The Scissor tool is C and the Eye Dropper tool is I. T for the Text tool, S for the Scale tool and lastly R for the Rotate tool.

You may also notice the addition of Duplicate in Place, Shift+Command+J. Plus the very useful Group, Command+G and its little friend Ungroup, Shift+Command+G.

That’s it for the keyboard shortcuts, now time for the modifier keys. Yep, all of the second finger modifiers have come to the keyboard.

First off the Shift key, which constrains the tools in a variety of ways. Holding this while using the Selection tool will constrain the movement of selections to horizontal, diagonal or vertical. Can you see it snapping as I move around?

Next we have the Rotation tool. Again holding down Shift, this will constrain all rotations to a 45º angle.

Holding the Shift key while using the Scale tool will perform a non-uniform scale, allowing you to stretch shapes in all sorts of ways.

In the Shape tools, holding down the Shift key will allow you to draw a perfect square with the Rectangle tool and a perfect circle with the Oval tool. It will keep the inner radius of the Star tool static, so you can make your stars as pointy or squishy as you like. And finally the Line tool can be constrained to horizontal, diagonal or vertical while holding the Shift key.

Holding the Option or Alt key (depending on your keyboard) affects the Selection tool in two ways. The first is while dragging a marquee, when I hold down the Option key on my keyboard the starting point of my marquee becomes the center. The second is while dragging a control handle, holding down the Option key will cause the opposing control handle to remain fixed and break the connection between the two.

The Option key also affects the Pen Tool in a similar manner. When placing a node, and dragging its control handle, holding the Option key will cause the opposing handle to remain fixed and break the connection between the two.

If that wasn’t enough I have one final treat for you keyboard users - nudging. Now you can nudge anything you have selected by one or ten pixels. It’s all straightforward; use the Arrow keys to nudge by one pixel and to give your selection a good shove use Shift+Arrow to move by ten pixels.

Lindsay.