DrawIt 3.7 Review: Drawing with Style

Vectors are probably going to be the future. They are resolution independent, take up almost no space, and can be changed easily. Many even speculate that Snow Leopard will see the beginning of a real resolution independent operating system. This would explain why there are so many vector tools out there today. Today I will talk about one of these, called DrawIt.

Most vector applications allow you to set fill colors, strokes, gradients, shadows, and text. Well, DrawIt takes this a step further with over 100 filters. These are all non destructive, so you can simply delete (or hide) a filter, and the effect will be gone. They are also stackable, which allows you to have them applied in a specific order. Like any other vector app, it also has stackable layers. But it gives you more than one way to see the layers: list view and icon view. So, instead of having to give your layers extremely descriptive names, you can just check out the preview of the layer. Another thing that you will probably notice is that DrawIt is a one-window application. Anything you need to do can be done in the main window. This is in contrast to applications that have inspectors, and other unneeded windows. And yet despite these, DrawIt doesn’t look cluttered at all — it still looks simple and elegant.

The biggest change in DrawIt lately has been its removal of bitmap tools. Yes, it no longer combines both bitmap and vector tools, but if you purchased DrawIt when it did have bitmap tools, you can get a free copy of Acorn. So, for those of you who purchased DrawIt a while back and never picked up your free copy of Acorn, just get it here. With the dismissal of the bitmap tools, DrawIt has also seen a rewrite of the vector tools. This makes it faster, and just better. Another removal is localizations. They were getting too hard for him to keep up, so the developer had to remove them. So, if you don’t speak English, DrawIt may be a little hard for you to use. The final notable upgrade is the ripple and page-curl effects. These sound like small new features, but they are not, for one reason: DrawIt Batch.

These two have been added to DrawIt from the unreleased DrawIt batch. DrawIt Batch is still under development, but it will be released soon. It will take the idea of effects and apply it to batch image processing. So, you can apply many effects (in a specific order) to many images quickly.

DrawIt retails for about $40 and you can download a free trial from their site. Although $40 seems like a lot, compared to other vector tools, it is cheap. But it has so many features and is so easy to use. If you are on the market for a vector tool, try out DrawIt — you may be happy that you did.

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