Shapes, freehand drawing and area highlights
Use these tools to mark up a drawing or page. Each mark is a normal annotation: you can select, move, restyle, comment on and delete it, and every change is one undo step (see Undo and redo).
Draw a shape
- Press R (rectangle), E (ellipse), O (cloud), L (line) or A (arrow). You can also choose the Shapes tool on the toolbar and pick a shape in the options bar. In the app: Help ▸ Show me
- Set the options in the options bar. In the app: Help ▸ Show me
- Drag on the page from one corner (or the line start) to the opposite corner (or the line end).
- The new shape is selected, so you can change its style straight away.
Pressing the same shape key again returns you to the Select tool. Drags smaller than 3 pixels are ignored.
Options
| Option | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Rectangle, Ellipse, Cloud (revision cloud), Line, Arrow | Rectangle |
| Line | Solid, Dashed or Dotted | Solid |
| Colour | Outline colour | Red (#d62828) |
| Width | Outline thickness, 0.5 to 12 | 1.5 |
| Fill | Tick to fill closed shapes; choose the fill colour beside it | Off |
| Opacity | 10 % to 100 % | 100 % |
Hold Shift for exact shapes
| Shape | With Shift held while dragging |
|---|---|
| Rectangle, ellipse, cloud | A square, circle or square cloud |
| Line, arrow | Angle snapped to steps of 45 degrees |
Draw freehand
- Press P to choose Draw. In the app: Help ▸ Show me
- Set Line, Colour, Width and Opacity (there is no fill).
- Hold the mouse button and draw. When you let go, the stroke is lightly smoothed.
Highlight an area
Highlight area (H) shades a rectangle, for example over a drawing where no text can be selected. In the app: Help ▸ Show me
- Press H.
- Choose Colour (default yellow) and Opacity (10 % to 50 %, default 35 %).
- Drag a rectangle over the area.
Tip
To highlight lines of text, use Highlight text instead.
Note
Add a short comment to a mark so the reviewer knows what it refers to: see Comments panel.