The Breakroom

Introducing Linea Sketch 3

April 7, 2020

By Ged Maheux

Today’s update marks an important milestone in the life of Linea Sketch. The app launched three years ago with a focus on making it easy for you to express your creative vision. It seems only fitting to launch version 3 with a renewed emphasis on making Linea work best for you with powerful new features and improvements, including a universal app for both iPad and iPhone.

Time Is On Your Side

With today’s release, you can record your creative process as you sketch! Linea’s new Time-Lapse feature keeps a running record of your drawing while you work. When you’ve finished drawing, save a video of the result as either a compressed 30 second clip or a full length movie. The video can be saved to the Photo Library or shared via social media.

Linea’s Crop & Export options are supported and let you focus on just a portion of the time-lapse. It’s perfect for highlighting details in a particular section of a drawing. Sketches with a time-lapse are badged in the project view for easy reference, and the timeline is synced via iCloud to all of your devices. Finally, if you want to save storage space, you can turn Time-Lapse off by default via Settings or delete it when you’re finished.

Quick Additional Control

Version 3 introduces QuickToggle, a handy way to gain extra control when creating ZipLines or sketching with the Pencil tool. When you draw a line and pause to create a ZipLine, you can now place a single finger anywhere on the canvas to snap the end point of the line to isometric and oblique angles. It’s great for technical drawing or those who want perfectly angled strokes.

QuickToggle also lets you temporarily turn off tilt control when drawing. Simply start to draw a broad stroke with the Art or Technical Pencil, then place a finger on the canvas. Linea will disregard tilt and adjust the shape of the stroke until you release. This results in a more free-flowing technique when sketching.

Linea Your Way

Also included are a series of features designed for tailoring the app to how you work best. Folks have wanted the ability to customize the color of the canvas without having to fill one of Linea’s five layers. Now you can! Tapping the Background icon and selecting the new Custom Background option shows you Linea’s color picker, including recently used and hex colors. The texture option even lets you create your own custom paper backgrounds!

In addition to custom backgrounds, you also adjust the intensity of templates to light, medium, and strong. This is great when you need additional clarity while designing or for folks who need more visual contrast.

Twitterrific users know how we love to customize our home screen and we’re now bringing that customization love to Linea. Open Settings and select from a bevy of colorful new app icons to display. Setting a custom theme also adjusts Linea’s interface tinting for both light and dark modes.

One More Thing

Last December we announced Linea Sketch would be moving to a subscription model to generate regular and predictable revenue that keeps bug and feature updates flowing. Today’s release changes Linea to a subscription model. We’ve received a great deal of feedback on our original plan and have removed limits on canvas creation. Instead, we’ll be using less restrictive reminders and badging.

Linea Sketch 3 is free to download and use on an unlimited basis. The app is universal (iPad and iPhone) and feature complete, letting people enjoy all that Linea has to offer, free of charge.

When you pay to support development, you remove periodic notices and a home screen banner that remind you to subscribe. Watermarks on exported artwork and time-lapse movies are also removed when subscribed. You can support Linea with a monthly or annual subscription or choose one-time payment for the lifetime of Linea Sketch. Lastly, if you purchased Linea Sketch in 2019 or later, your first year is free. Please see our Purchase Policy for more information.

If you haven’t tried Linea yet, today’s update is a great time to see what so many people love and call their favorite sketching app for iPad. Visit Linea’s version history page for the complete list of what’s new and then head on over to the App Store to download Linea Sketch. You’ll be creating in no time!