Pencil workflow?

[kat.hayes]

I am playing with the 12.9 iPP and am trying to understand a workflow for doing every day/non-creative tasks.

1. I take a screenshot and want to annotate on it. There does not seem to be a built in way for doing this. Is there a way to do this without downloading some app?

2. I download Skitch and annotate on the screenshot and than I save the file and it is saved to the Camera Roll along with lots of other photos. Is there some way to make a custom folder in the Photos app for custom projects?

3. I open Notes and want to highlight some text and can't do that. I have a photo attached to a note and want to annotate on the note and I can't do that.

4. I open Keynote and Pages and try to annotate on documents and can't.

5. I open a .PDF in Dropbox and want to annotate on it and I am directed to download Adobe Acrobat, I do and than I highlight some text and want to save it and my only option to convert it to a .PDF appears to cost $2 a month.

Can someone please suggest some workflows to achieve some of the basic things Im trying to achieve.

Thank you.

 

[Capt T]

I use goodnotes to annotate, photos, PDFs, take written notes, organize notebooks, etc. There are other apps to do all of this as well.

 

[Nhwhazup]

I am playing with the 12.9 iPP and am trying to understand a workflow for doing every day/non-creative tasks.

1. I take a screenshot and want to annotate on it. There does not seem to be a built in way for doing this. Is there a way to do this without downloading some app?

2. I download Skitch and annotate on the screenshot and than I save the file and it is saved to the Camera Roll along with lots of other photos. Is there some way to make a custom folder in the Photos app for custom projects?

3. I open Notes and want to highlight some text and can't do that. I have a photo attached to a note and want to annotate on the note and I can't do that.

4. I open Keynote and Pages and try to annotate on documents and can't.

5. I open a .PDF in Dropbox and want to annotate on it and I am directed to download Adobe Acrobat, I do and than I highlight some text and want to save it and my only option to convert it to a .PDF appears to cost $2 a month.

Can someone please suggest some workflows to achieve some of the basic things Im trying to achieve.

Thank you.

I use pdf Expert and love it for marking up and/or signing docs on the go.

 

[GeoFan49]

The SKITCH app, plus at least one good mosaic/collage app, to combine images into some layout, are essential to my use of any iPad, if I want to annotate screenshots.

Skitch u/i can be frustrating, even after using it on Mac and iPad for several years! It's laggy and too highly modal. The patience of a Zen master may be a prerequisite for using Skitch. IMHO.

 

[Cascades42]

The Notes app will let you just play with the pencil for starters. I personally use Notability to annotate pictures and PDFs. I always use the open in menu from Pages and other apps to open into Notability, if I want to annotate a document, or I create a new note in Notability and import pictures to annotate those.

 

[Beavix]

Skitch u/i can be frustrating, even after using it on Mac and iPad for several years! It's laggy and too highly modal. The patience of a Zen master may be a prerequisite for using Skitch. IMHO.

Skitch for iOS has been discontinued since December 2015 (and it was last updated almost one year ago).

 

[mrklaw]

If you find the answer to number 2 let me know. So frustrating that all of my random stuff like images downloaded from the Internet for temporary reference get put alongside my photos I've taken. Saving to iCloud Drive would be ideal.

 

[Abazigal]

1) download the screenshot app. It's an extension which lets you annotate on photos directly from within the photos app.

2) There's a photo album for screenshots but I don't know of any other way of sending a photo to another album or destination.

4) iWorks doesn't let you annotate on documents but office does.

5) Download Documents or PDF expert and sync your Dropbox files to it. This downloads the files to your iPad, where you can then annotate on them (PDF expert is a very capable PDF annotation app in its own right). Changes will automatically be synced with Dropbox.

 

[sjleworthy]

Notes, in my opinion, is pretty rubbish/basic. Not much good for productivity.
Try apps like Notability and PDF Expert or Goodnotes. These are cheap apps and can do all what you want.

 

[username:]

Sounds like you are set against learning new ways to do things and just want everything to work the way you want it to.

I would suggest downloading Workflow and Evernote but you say "without downloading some app". Huh. News flash. The best thing about iOS is apps. If you don't ever want to download "some app" then I'm not sure you will ever get much done.

If you expect the default OS to support every feature under the sun, the best way is to find external apps to do those jobs. As iOS has the best app ecosystem by far, I would suggest being open to downloading "some apps" and using them rather than just expecting the device to do every single possible job you can devise.

 

[GeoFan49]

Skitch for iOS has been discontinued since December 2015 (and it was last updated almost one year ago).

Wow. Another one bites the dust. SKITCH was a great app. After the acquisition by Evernote, they ruined it, then they discontinued it. Wow. Just wow. SMH.

 

[stanw]

It does seem like a little more could have been done to customize iOS for the IPP to take advantage of the Pencil without the need for 3rd party apps for the basics. Why not at least add more functionality to the Pages, Notes, etc. Why not have some built in way to annotate screenshots? I'm pretty sure on a Samsung Note phone as soon as you pull the stylus out a menu activates on screen and you can do all of the things the OP was asking about without 3rd party apps...

 

[Abazigal]

It does seem like a little more could have been done to customize iOS for the IPP to take advantage of the Pencil without the need for 3rd party apps for the basics. Why not at least add more functionality to the Pages, Notes, etc. Why not have some built in way to annotate screenshots? I'm pretty sure on a Samsung Note phone as soon as you pull the stylus out a menu activates on screen and you can do all of the things the OP was asking about without 3rd party apps...

iWork's hasn't even been updated to take advantage of the newer iOS 9 features such as split-screen multitasking. It seems that with Office now available on iOS (and Microsoft doing a very good job of keeping it updated), Apple is content to just let iWork's languish for now.

It's possible that Apple simply hasn't had the time to implement such a feature yet. Perhaps Apple doesn't think that photo annotation is a feature which should come default with the iOS photos app, or they are content to let 3rd party developers step in, now that iOS supports extensions, and Screenshot is a free app anyways.

 

[xraydoc]

iWork's hasn't even been updated to take advantage of the newer iOS 9 features such as split-screen multitasking. It seems that with Office now available on iOS (and Microsoft doing a very good job of keeping it updated), Apple is content to just let iWork's languish for now.

It's possible that Apple simply hasn't had the time to implement such a feature yet. Perhaps Apple doesn't think that photo annotation is a feature which should come default with the iOS photos app, or they are content to let 3rd party developers step in, now that iOS supports extensions, and Screenshot is a free app anyways.

iWork has been updated to support split screen.

 

[alecgold]

The apps I use are:
Goodnotes for making college notes on pdf's from keynotes. (I think PDF Expert 5 can manage this as well, but I'm used to Goodnotes)
PDF Expert 5 for everything else. file system, quick annotating pdf's from coworkers, highlighting pdf's is easy, quick view excels, docx's etc.
Microsoft Word for making new documents, editing current ones etc. Word also allows me to annotating existing documents with the pencil, making stick-man drawings and other awful things
Microsoft Executives Excel for viewing and small edits to spreadsheets, but if it gets more difficult, I tend to move to my Thunderbolt Display & MacBook Pro.
Slack is for work communications, just like Readdle's Calender, Scanner and Printer Pro are for work agenda, receipt scanner and to get to the printers at work.
Ulysses is for working on new ideas, when I want undisturbed, undistracted think&type-time with easy formatting where my fingers don't need to leave the keyboard.

I know I'm just scratching the surface and that many things can be improved, but this is how far I came since the introduction of the iPP 12.9 when I started using iOS seriously for work instead just as a phone OS.