Color enhancements - available now on iOS

With update 5.2 rolling out over this week, this finalizes the app transitions to Sketchbook as an independent company.

One unfortunate outcome of our spin out from Autodesk is that the Copic branded content was removed from Sketchbook in the hand-off, including their color library and the Copic brush set. We know that for many of you this change has not been a positive one, you have reached out to let us know how unhappy you are to not have the palettes as a quick way to select colors.

We have focused effort on enhancing the Color Editor to provide you with new ways to choose your color, and are rolling it out with our iOS update this week.

The top portion of the Color Editor now displays your active color selection along with quick access to its complementary color, and a color history of your last 9 used colors. On the right side, an icon lets you toggle from the Color Wheel panel to the new Color Set panel.

We’ve introduced Color Sets as a new method of creating and storing palettes of swatches. A set consists of 12 palettes that can each hold up to 60 swatches. This allows you more ways of grouping and organizing your own color palettes.  

We’ve included three template Color Sets to get you started, including a Basic starter set, a Variety collection, and a set of greys.

During building out these default sets, we were reminded how important it was to provide the features to customize and organize sets. We didn’t see it as replacing the previous licensed color system, rather, we are opening it up so it would be easier for everyone to create and manage their own collections.

Other Color Enhancements in this release:

• Custom Gradient for generating 9-swatch blends of 2 selected colors

• HEX color values field to allow copying and pasting color across apps

• On iPad, you can take advantage of the larger screen size to pin the Color Editor from the color puck to remain open while you draw or when customizing your palettes with the color selector

We learned a lot through the process of working on this update. It took a few iterations to refine designs that didn’t feel quite right when we actually tested them. And we added a few things we hadn’t originally planned for. This work, along with the file/iCloud changes, represents our first feature development to the project and our first step towards ongoing enhancements.

Now that we have the enhanced color editor ready to roll on iOS, work is already underway to apply it on the other platforms.

1. Previous color

2. Current color

3. Complementary of current color

4. Color Set toggle

5. 9-swatch color history

6. Transparent color

7. Eye dropper (color selector)

8. HSL sliders

9. Color Set (mini-view)

10. Custom Color Gradient

11. RGB sliders

12. Randomize color

13. Edit HEX value

14. Paste HEX from clipboard