Oh snap it’s a new update for Flow and it’s all about making straight lines and perfect shapes. Actually, it’s not all about that, there is a bunch of other cool stuff too like a brand new brush tool and updated Tool Designer.
Questions? Talk to us at flow@bonobolabs.com. We’re human.
Snap Perfect Lines and Shapes
Flow can now detect what you’ve just drawn, and turn it into a perfect straight line or shape. After drawing a stroke, simply hold still for a brief moment without lifting up to make it happen.
Flow will detect
- straight lines
- curved lines
- rectangles (including squares)
- circles
- ellipses (ovals)
- triangles (right angle and isosceles)
Lines
When you draw a nearly straight line, it will snap to being perfectly straight and allow you to drag around the end point. (You can choose in the Drawing and Gestures settings if you want to just have it place immediately). When you bring the line close to being exactly horizontal or vertical, it will snap to those directions. A curved line will get smoothed into a nice curve.
Arrows
In the Drawing and Gestures settings you can enable the menu to pop up after you draw a line to add arrows and dots to its ends.
Shapes
Draw a shape for Flow to snap it to being perfectly drawn. Shapes that are close to being lined up straight with the page will adjust to line up exactly.
Preferences
You can find preferences to adjust in the Drawing and Gestures menu, for example you can enable shapes to get automatically selected by the lasso tool as soon as they get created.
Redesigned Ruler
The ruler tool is now presented in two modes you can switch between: Simple and Technical. The previous design is what we are calling the Technical mode. Switch between them at the top of the new ruler panel that appears when the ruler tool is turned on.
Simple Ruler
The new simple ruler puts a ruler object on the page that you can drag around and draw along its edges. Use two fingers to rotate it, or grab it by the rotation handle. Tap the magnet icon on the ruler panel to have rotation snap to 5 degree increments. You can also tap on the rotation handle to quickly set the ruler to horizontal and vertical.
New Flat Brush Tool
This new tool is similar to the round brush pen but it uses a wide flat brush tip that can be rotated, and has a more pronounced faded edge. It uses some of the new tool options also added this version to fade in and out as you draw strokes with it.
Updated Tool Designer
The Tool Setup screen is now called the Tool Designer. It has a new interface that lets you choose the size, opacity and color to try out on the scratch pad as you fine tune your preferences.
Also in this version
Better Eyedropper
The eyedropper now does a better job of picking the right color you drag over. There is also a new setting for it under Drawing and Gestures where you can choose if it grabs the exact color on the page or the original color of the tool that created it. There is also a new gesture so you can have 1 finger press + drawing will bring up the eyedropper.
New Stroke Width Fluctuation Model
The way strokes can change in width organically as you draw is now consistent at any zoom level and has a more natural feel, adjustable in the Tool Designer.
New Stroke Fade control
In the Tool Designer there is a new setting where you can choose how a tool fades in and out as you draw with it.
New Settings for Fun Options
There is a new menu on the main menu just for the fun things. Got a fun idea to add to Flow? Let us know!