Steady and predictive stroke

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Sketchbook has two stroke tools to help create smooth and uniform strokes: Steady Stroke and Predictive Stroke.

Steady Stroke

Use  Steady Stroke to draw smoother strokes.

Think of Steady Stroke like painting with a brush that has long bristles. The longer the bristles are, the steadier the stroke is in the direction you are 'pulling', producing a smoother stroke overall.

Steady Stroke has a level setting that determines the offset. The higher the setting, the longer the offset will be between your cursor and the stroke.

• To draw large smooth curves, increase the offset.
• To draw small curves with tight turn radii, decrease the offset.

To return to freestyle stroke mode, tap the Steady Stroke  icon again to toggle it off.

Predictive Stroke

Predictive Stroke  helps to improve your stroke quality by making some assumptions about your intent and adjusting the drawn line accordingly. This tool can be particularly useful when drawing slowly, or if your hand isn't necessarily steady.

Notice in this first image, how jagged the lines are. The second was made with Predictive Stroke.The lines are much smoother and the intent of the strokes is captured nicely.

Want to draw a perfect ellipse, circle, triangle, rectangle, or line? With Predictive Stroke activated and Level set to for or 5, draw any one of these on the screen and see the tool fix them.

Setting the level of smoothness

Use the smoothness Level slider to set just how much you want your stroke to be smoothed. The higher the number, the smoother the stroke. A higher level also makes it easier for Sketchbook to recognize a circle, ellipse, or straight line when drawing freehand. If you want to draw a straight line, sharp corners, a circle or ellipse freehand, set Level to 4 or 5. The higher the number the better the shape recognition.

Snapping

Predictive stroke tries to understand your objective when drawing shapes such as lines, triangles, rectangles, and ellipses. However sometimes this can get in your way - an example is if you are trying to draw a straight line with a slight angle, Predictive Stroke is likely to snap that angle to 0 degrees making it perfectly horizontal.

To avoid this problem, you can turn off snapping  in the Predictive Stroke sub-toolbar.

Note: turning off snapping will not affect rectangular shapes, their angles will still snap to 45 degrees.

Effect of zoom on Predictive Stroke

Your view in the canvas can also influence the amount your stroke is changed. More detail is removed from your stroke, making it smoother when you’re zoomed out. When zoomed tightly into your image, less detail is lost.

Using Steady and Predictive Stroke in Sketchbook Pro for desktop

Using Steady Stroke

1. In the toolbar, tap  Steady Stroke. Another toolbar appears with a slider.
   • Tap-drag the slider or enter a numeric value to set the offset between your cursor and the stroke.
2. Tap  again to exit the tool.

Using Predictive Stroke

1. In the toolbar, select  Predictive Stroke.
2. Determine how much smoothing you want and set a value using the Level slider. Select a higher number for more smoothing or a smaller number for light smoothing. Remember that how much you’re zoomed in will have an effect.
3. Tap  again to exit the tool.

Using Steady Stroke and Predictive Stroke in Sketchbook for mobile devices

Using Steady Stroke

1. In the toolbar, select  Steady Stroke.
2. Tap-drag the slider to set the offset between your cursor and the stroke.
3. you can tap  to minimize the sub-toolbar and continue drawing with Steady Stroke still enabled.
4. When finished, tap X to exit and turn off Steady Stroke.

Using Predictive Stroke

1. In the toolbar, select  Predictive Stroke.
2. Determine how much smoothing you want and set a value using the Level slider.  Select a higher number for more smoothing or a smaller number for light smoothing. Remember that how much you’re zoomed in will have an effect.
3. you can tap  to minimize the sub-toolbar and continue drawing with Predictive Stroke still enabled.
4. When finished, tap X to exit and turn off Predictive Stroke.