Many business users rely heavily on Evernote for managing documents and other information, but the service’s Achilles’ heel has long been its lack of markup capabilities.
That’s where Skitch comes in. Now owned by Evernote, this desktop/mobile app provides a simple but effective set of tools for annotating documents, the idea being to get your point across visually when communicating remotely.
And it just got a much-needed feature boost: Skitch for iOS (and Mac) now supports PDF annotation.
That may not sound like a big deal, but for anyone who uses Evernote to store and especially share PDFs, it’s welcome news indeed. Now you can mark up PDFs with text, arrows, shapes and highlighter tools, then sync them back to your account and/or share them with co-workers.
The new Skitch 2.5 also adds something called Summary, which assembles all added mark-ups into a single view. Evernote describes it thusly:
When you share an annotated multi-page PDF, Skitch lets you add a new first page to that document. This page is made up of previews of each piece of feedback contained in the PDF. Click on one and you’re taken to the annotation. This summary makes it a snap for your recipient to scan over all of your feedback, understand it, and take action without needing to go beyond the first page.
Other additions to Skitch 2.5 include a stamps tool used to add color-coded, at-a-glance feedback (approve, disapprove, question, etc.) to specific areas, and tool tips to help you learn the new features.
Although Stamps is available to all Skitch users, the PDF and Summary functions require an Evernote Premium account (though you can try them free for 30 days even if you’re not a paying Evernote customer).
There are, of course, lots of PDF apps that offer markup tools, and a few that can even sync with Evernote. But if you’re looking to keep everything in the Evernote ecosystem, as it were, now you can.