LateNiteSoft Has Released Sketches 1.5

LateNiteSoft has just announced the release of Sketches 1.5 through Apple's App Store. The latest update of the popular drawing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch includes some new features suggested by existing customers, as well as increased reliability. Existing customers can download the update for free, whereas new users can purchase a full license of Sketches for just $4.99 / 3.99 Euro.

"As we have stated since our initial launch of Sketches in July, we are committed to improving the application and listen to our customers' feedback. Due to our Mac shareware heritage, we don't believe in ephemeral success; instead, we strongly believe in quality apps and regular updates" says Jorge Llubiá, co-founder and COO. The new update brings some new features which have been requested by LateNiteSoft's existing customers. These include the ability to select color opacity, an improved stroke width selection control or a new hosting service to facilitate sharing your work via twitter or email.

"Adding varying degrees of opacity was not a technical issue. The real challenge was to incorporate that feature in a consistent and coherent way with the rest of the interface, without negatively impacting usability. In the few days that Sketches 1.5 has been available, we are amazed to see people already taking advantage of the new feature to create awesome works - we will definitely expand into this area in our upcoming Sketches 2.0 release.", explains Jorge.


The new version of Sketches also brings its own image hosting service, which is used to store pictures that Sketches users are willing to share via twitter or email. "The sharing features have been available since the initial release of Sketches, but they relied on third party image hosting services to operate", explains Pedro Cuenca, CTO. "Starting with Sketches 1.5, shared images are uploaded to our own service, fully developed and operated by us. This way we are in full control of all the aspects of the application, and can avoid unwanted side effects, such as excessive or inappropriate advertisements, downtime or privacy concerns. In addition, operating our own image hosting service will allow us to grow Sketches sharing features easily - we have some ideas we'd like to expand on in Sketches 2.0 and other future releases.".

Other improvements in Sketches 1.5 include bug fixes, and a more responsive stroke width control. "This might seem a silly change, but we did not realize you need to precisely touch on top of the slider knob until some of our customers pointed us to this problem - so used as we were to the default behaviour. After we created our own version of the same control, our customers are no longer finding it difficult to operate it the way they naturally expect the control to behave", explains Jorge. "Likewise, the bug fixes in this version solve scenarios we had not tested ourselves. We are very grateful for all the feedback and encouragement we receive".

Among other distinctions, Sketches has received a 4.5 mouse rating from Macworld, has been favorably reviewed by TUAW, Ars Technica and Gizmodo, and has earned 5-star ratings from iPhoneAlley and 148apps. An Apple "Staff Favorite" in most countries, it is the #9 Entertainment application in the "Best of iTunes 2008" selection posted by Apple in their various sites.

Pricing and Availability:
Sketches 1.5 is available through Apple's App Store for only $4.99 / 3.99 Euro. It can be downloaded for free by existing customers.