the designer’s toolbox
Sketch is a professional vector graphics app with a beautiful interface and powerful tools.
We set out to build a better app for graphic designers. Not to copy, but rather to improve.
Making good graphics can be challenging and you need an application specifically designed for this purpose. We believe Sketch is the application you’ve been looking for. It has all the tools you need and they come in a beautiful, easy to use package.
Drawing your graphics with shapes and lines means that you can scale the result to any size. You can build a new shape from primitive shapes or start a new one with the vector or pencil tool.
Everything in Sketch looks sharp; fuzzy edges are a thing of the past. Your vectors look sharp, your text is beautiful and if you want to make sure; turn on pixel grid, zoom in and see for yourself. You get the best of both worlds.
Layers are the basic building blocks and you can style them to your heart’s content. A layer can have up to four color, gradient or pattern fills and can have independent opacity, noise and blending. But we didn’t stop there, we have glow effects, blur and reflection filters as well.
Gradients in Sketch can be edited directly in the canvas and are non-destructive. Besides that, we have a great color picker that supports both RGB and HSL colors. It's conveniently located inside the inspector and only shows when needed.
If you want to to save color, gradients, patterns or complete layer styles for later use, you can turn them into presets and even share one style between multiple layers. Change one, and all layers sharing the style will change.
Working with shapes in Sketch is easy. Basic shapes such as rectangles, ovals and triangles are already in the app. A rounded rectangle will always remain a proper rounded rectangle and you can easily adjust the corner radius again at a later point. These basic shapes are a great starting point for more advanced shapes.
Instead of drawing complex shapes with the pencil or vector tool by hand, build them instead by combining basic shapes using boolean operations. Subtract layers to punch holes or unite them them to merge two shapes into one. The best thing is that boolean operations in Sketch are completely non-destructive.
The best thing is that boolean operations in Sketch are completely non-destructive. This means that when you subtract a star shape from a rounded rectangle, you can still change the corner radius on the rectangle or the number of points on the star. Working with complex shapes in Sketch is a breeze.
A slice is an area on the page you want to export to a single file. A page in Sketch can have as many slices as you want and you can export them to bitmap formats such as JPG,PNG or vector formats such as PDF and SVG. Working with Slices in Sketch is incredibly intuitive
For each slice you can specify which layer to include and which to leave out. You can also automatically trim transparent pixels from the edge of a slice. If you design iOS icons you’ll appreciate our @2x export option.
The canvas in Sketch is infinitely large. If you want to mark the bounds of your work you’ll love our Artboards feature. They can be exported individually as well.
We think text rendering quality is super-important. Text in Sketch looks beautiful and working with text is a bliss. We have custom font inspector and we even support text styles. Because Sketch uses the Mac OS Text system you get automatic support for Arabic, Hebrew and other non-Latin scrips.
Text rendered in Sketch is beautiful and it will look exactly like how it will in Safari. Double-click to edit and the Inspector will show you a list of fonts and advanced typographic features such as decorations, line height and character spacing.
Sketch supports text styles which will keep text layers on and across pages in sync with each other. If you’re doing web design you’ll no doubt find this feature an immense time-saver.
Sketch will make sure your vectors always perfectly align to pixel bounds. When you draw a new shape, or edit the individual vector points of an existing one, Sketch will make sure everything looks perfect. Even after you resize a shape it will still look exactly like it should. Fuzzy edges are a thing of the past; everything will be sharp.
When you zoom in you can choose between a full vector zoom or turn the pixel grid on. With full vector zoom you can zoom into your objects as much as you want and make sure the tiniest details are correct. Turn on pixel zoom to look at your work as if it were exported to bitmap already. You get the best of both worlds.
When you have pixel zoom turned on, you’ll see that Sketch’s antialising is top-notch; transitions between colors are smooth and natural. We’ve really sweated the details here. Shadows never leak from where they shouldn’t and fills overlap each other perfectly. If you care about pixel-precision, Sketch is the right app for you.
“Dear designer, how often have you thought: someone should build a Photoshop for interface design? Well, it’s here and it’s very good.”
– Koen Bok, Sofa Cofounder / Product Designer at Facebook
“Sketch 2 is what all those Mac users clamouring for an alternative graphic editors have been waiting for.”
– Jon Hicks, Hicksdesign
“Sketch 2 is probably the tool that most user interface and icon designers have been dreaming of for years. A+.”
– Benjamin de Cock, Interface Designer
“Imagine a design tool created to work the way you work. Sketch 2 has proven to be this tool and it’s about time for a change.”
– Marcelo Marfil, Interface Designer
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