socialrosiechen: Google Docs Drawing tool removes any reason to use MS Paint ever again

Friday, August 20, 2010

Google Docs Drawing tool removes any reason to use MS Paint ever again

Today I had a quick play with the Google Docs drawing tool. It's awesome, but yet there's a strong chance that you didn't even know it existed! Just head over to docs.google.com > Create New > Drawing and give it a go. Don't forget to Insert > Image -- a whole wealth of Google Images await your artistic meddling! Poke around with the tools; they're very easy to use.

OK, drawn something fun? Now I can tell you about cool bits that I really didn't expect to see in a browser-based drawing tool. Hit Ctrl-Z to undo your last action -- Ctrl-Y to redo works as well. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are available for copying and pasting. Because it's vector-based, you can click anything you've scribbled and grab a corner to stretch or scale it.

There's more! The Drawing tool has a complete set of flow chart symbols (and other shapes) that you can drag and drop into place -- and because this is Google Docs, you can collaboratively work on the same chart or diagram! I'm sure there's a plethora of potential organizey-businessy applications for that kind of functionality.

Finally, there's a ton of ways in which you can export your Google Drawings. There's a new 'Web Clipboard', which lets you select your image and then paste into another Google Doc. This clipboard is associated with your Google account, so you can store something there and retrieve it from any Web-attached computer if you desire. You can also download your finished image as a JPEG, PNG, SVG or PDF file.

I told you it was awesome! Die, MS Paint, die.