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There are many drawing programs on the market today, but I think this one is
going to get more notice than others. Net Sketch is an easy to use program specially made so you can draw boxes, pictures or make some fancy text for your WWW page without having to load up CorelDRAW™, Adobe
Illustrator™ or any other big drawing program.
Net Sketch is a small program that does some pretty big things. First I noticed how easy it was to figure out how to use it without reading the Help file.
After all, who wants to do that until you've messed around awhile and gotten stuck. With Net Sketch, though, I didn't get stuck. From drawing lines, boxes and the standard items which can be found in Paint for Windows
95™, to making shadows, putting a colored edge on my text and even some really neat fills, this little shareware program made getting really nice results really easy. The text is what really impressed me more than
anything. Again, unless you want to bring out the big guns, making shadows that can be customized as to color, transparency or angle can be a chore. Even further, you can fill your text with the bitmap or color of your
choice. And you can make a really super color fill in a matter of seconds.
Additionally, unlike some programs that won't let you undo some operations, Net Sketch will let you change the colors, shadows or any
attribute of text or other objects at any time. Again this is a small program, so while it does some of the big gun things much easier than they do, the tool box isn't very extensive. This is not a replacement for the
other drawing programs, but a quick convenient way to make some fancy text or other object for your WWW page or for that matter your latest newsletter, etc. in a very short period of time. Net Sketch will export to
.BMP, .PCX, .GIF and .JPG. As with all programs, however, there are a couple of little problems I have with Net Sketch. Despite all of the great things about the program, if you like to use GIF files with transparent
backgrounds on your WWW page, you can't set the colors in Net Sketch. I had to load my finished GIF into another program to set the transparent background.
Another problem is that all files except for the
bitmaps used for the fills have to originate in Net Sketch. You can't import a file from any other program for use by Net Sketch. On the upside, I was using version 1.05B so there is plenty of opportunity to fix those
problems in later versions. Another one of the great things about Net Sketch and other shareware programs is you can download and try a copy before opening your wallet. Then, once you register you can log on and get the
latest versions as soon as they are available. Despite my two concerns, I would recommend giving it a test drive. Net Sketch is from Vegas FX, Inc. and can be found on the web
here.
Additional reviews by Doug Hess Jr. are available at his web site. |
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