Filed under: Software, Graphic Design
xScope 2.0
If I had any talent whatsoever in the area of graphic design xScope would be a go to app in my toolbox. xScope, for those not in the know, is a great little app that makes measuring onscreen elements a snap. xScope 2.0 raises the ante by adding a Dimensions tool that works as if by magic. Turning on the Dimensions tool lets you find dimensions between various elements (or using a lasso tool) quickly and easily. It is tough to describe, but check out this cool video of it in action.There are a bunch of new features and improvements, all of which are listed here, which make xScope 2 more than worth the $26.95 for you pixel pushers out there.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris said 2:12PM on 1-30-2008
Rad little piece of software...
Wow that woman in the video is a bit annoying with her serious saliva sticky mouth noises.
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Bender Bending Rodriguez said 2:31PM on 1-30-2008
It's neat, but not $27 neat.
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ian said 2:37PM on 1-30-2008
I know it's mighty costly, but CS3 already has this feature built in.
I'm sure plenty of people don't want to pony up the cash for Adobe's latest juggernaut, but it's nice to know that it's in there anyway.
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Ian Murray said 2:40PM on 1-30-2008
And the CS3 version supports multi-dimensional objects as well.
You simply enter in a known value (or measurement) for one of the sides of the things you are measuring, and it tells you the dimensions of any other part based on the value you entered.
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sebastien Barrau said 2:49PM on 1-30-2008
How do you do that in illustrator ? that would com in handy ? i know i can lookit up in he help... :-) but if o can tell em that would be great thanks.
I've been using X-scope for 2 years now i think, great little app some times i create a template in photoshop and make frames with x-scope to know the precise size of my divs
Ian Murray said 2:43PM on 1-30-2008
I spoke too soon.
This is a system-wide function, not just inside CS3. That's actually pretty cool, I could certainly use the "know size of images on the fly" thing, but the widths of other things would be...superfluous.
But that's just me.
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Max said 3:50PM on 1-30-2008
I hate when people say "not worth the money". If it's not worth it to _you_, simply don't buy it. I, as a web developer, have been using 1.5 almost daily since it came out, and upgraded ($10) to 2.0 after reading this. The new features will make it even more useful. I have to do this sort of measuring all the time.
It's a useful tool, and saves a lot of time compared to the many other ways you could do this (e.g. Photoshop). Whether the time saved is worth the cost of the software is up to each of us. For me, it is.
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Jroen said 5:28PM on 1-30-2008
For firefox users is the MeasureIt plugin something you might want to check out.
http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/measureit/
Marshall said 7:12PM on 1-30-2008
I strongly second the MeasureIt plugin. It is extremely useful for web development.
ecobore said 7:22PM on 1-30-2008
This is a lovely bit of software but there are some similar and very useful facilities in the freeware pixelstick http://www.pixelatedsoftware.com/products/pixelstick/index.html
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Jerid Hill said 10:51AM on 1-31-2008
Measuring something on screen doesn't happen often. And when it does, you don't need a program to do it.
Hold in Apple / Shift / 4 and your cross hair comes up. Click and drag on anything you want to measure and it gives you on screen measurements. It will create an image of what you just captured, but that can easily be thrown in the trash. Hassle, maybe, but I measure on screen rarely, and when I do, a couple of seconds to throw my screen shot in the trash doesn't bother me.
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Brady J. Frey said 12:24PM on 1-31-2008
This is a great addition, I'd say it's worth the price and I'd actually pay more with the time it'll save my department. I typically have to take a screen shot of the browser, open that up in photoshop, take a measurement (for the anal pixel accuracy I need)... but this does it system wide, and fairly quickly. So, like they figured out above, CS3 does not do this system wide, it's unique to xscope.
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Gedeon said 12:38AM on 2-01-2008
Jerid, if you can click and drag a selection accurately by hand to within one pixel with command-shift-4 on the desktop, more power to you. You'd be the first person I know that this wouldn't either
A) take multiple attempts
B) take more than 30-90 seconds to get right
xScope's dimensions tool gets it right instantly every time. All I'm saying is don't discount the time it takes to get pixel accurate measurements. I know from years of experience it's difficult.
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Jason said 3:26PM on 2-04-2008
Gedeon:
You may have made that comment because you weren't aware of the "spacebar" feature available with Cmd + Shift + 4. I wasn't either until my Illustrator instincts unexpectedly caused me to try this while dragging the screen-cap cursor over my desktop. With spacebar, you can reposition your selection on the fly... making multiple or lengthy attempts unnecessary.
-J