Pictures and sketches

Put photos in a note at the size you want, or draw a sketch right on the page.

Add a picture

From a file: click ＋ in the toolbar and choose File or Picture…, or type /file and press Return.
Or drag the picture into the note.

From your photo library: tap the paperclip in the note's bar and choose Photo Library…, or type /photo and press Return.
From a file: tap the paperclip and choose File…, or drag the picture into the note.

The picture appears in the note itself. A large picture shows in full on the iPhone and the iPad too, just as on the Mac.

Resize a picture

Drag a corner of the picture.
Or choose Size in Note from the picture's menu: 25, 50 or 75 percent, or fit to the note.

The size you choose stays with the picture on all your devices.

Keep pictures small

Large pictures are shrunk as they arrive, so notes stay quick to open and sync. To choose how much, go to Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Pictures and move the slider between best quality and fastest. Pages you scan follow the same setting.

To shrink the pictures that are already in your notes, choose Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Pictures ▸ Reduce Pictures in All Notes…. NotaBene asks first, then tells you how many pictures in how many notes it shrank, and by how much. The command is dimmed while the size is set to Original.

Show a picture as its name

To make a picture take up one line, choose Display As ▸ Title from its menu: it becomes a one-line card with its badge, name and size. Choose Display As ▸ Preview to bring the picture back, at the size it had; the rest of the note moves back into place under it.

The picture itself is never lost while it is shown as its name, and your other devices show it the same way.

A picture keeps its name

Everything a picture has — how it is shown, the marks drawn on it, the width you gave it — belongs to its file name, and the name stays put on every device. Rename a picture with Rename… in its menu and it is still the same picture, with all of that intact. A picture whose name arrives with a line break in it, as some screenshots do, is renamed as it goes in, so the note can always find it.

Tip: Set as Note Preview in a picture's menu makes it the picture the note's card shows in the list.

Draw a sketch

On the Mac, choose Format ▸ Insert Sketch; on the iPhone and iPad, tap the paperclip in the note's bar and choose Sketch. Or type /sketch and press Return.
Draw on the white page that appears. It is as wide as the note's text.
Choose Save. The sketch is in the note.

Draw with the mouse or trackpad.

If your iPhone or iPad is nearby, there is a better way when you want a pen: right-click in the note's text and choose Import from iPhone or iPad ▸ Add Sketch. Draw on the iPhone or iPad, and the drawing lands in the note on the Mac. A drawing that arrives without a background is given white paper behind it.

Draw with Apple Pencil, using the system's tool picker.

The pen, shapes, arrows, highlighter and typed labels are the same tools you use to mark up a photo. The edge of the page is outlined while you draw — anything outside it is not kept.

To change a sketch later, tap or click it. Every stroke is still a stroke: you can move it, recolor it or erase it, weeks later.

The paper stays white in Dark Mode, so a black pen is never drawn on black and the sketch prints and exports the way you drew it. Everywhere else a sketch is a picture: it can be the note's thumbnail, it prints, exports and syncs, and search reads the words in it — printed handwriting reads well, joined-up writing does not.

See Also: Mark up a picture · Attach files · Scan documents · Search