How to digitise hand-drawn sketches and edit them online

1. Draw as usual. On any paper: notebook, pad, sketchbook. If you like, add a line with a #project, such as “sketched the stand for the fair #Fair”.
2. Photograph the page. With the Axsuro app, flat and straight from above, in good light. In the browser, upload photos or PDFs at app.axsuro.com.
3. Keep the sketch. Axsuro finds the drawing and shows it with a dashed frame. Tap “Keep sketch”, or “Not a sketch” if it isn't one.
4. Edit it in the editor. Move, scale, recolour, keep drawing. “Side by side” shows the original next to it, and “Reset” brings the sketch back exactly as it was on paper.
5. Export or share. Save it as PNG, PDF or SVG, or print it. From Plus, share it to edit and draw together live.

You don't need to mark anything. When Axsuro reads a page, it reads the text line by line and recognises drawings along the way. A sketch it finds gets a dashed frame and, like tasks and events, waits for your decision: “Keep sketch” or “Not a sketch”.

It works with most things people draw by hand:

• Floor plans and room layouts, such as a fair stand with stage, bar and entrance
• Flows made of boxes and arrows: request → offer → order
• Building plans and mind maps
• Whiteboards: a photo of a whiteboard is read like a page

If there is a line next to the drawing such as sketched the stand for the fair #Fair, the sketch belongs to the Fair project and you will find it there later.

Many people expect an app to smooth or redraw a sketch. Axsuro deliberately doesn't. “Keep sketch” cuts the drawing out of your photo, and every line stays in its place, as thick and in the colour you drew it.

It is still not a fixed picture. Every stroke becomes a line you can select and edit on its own. And if you get lost, “Reset” brings the sketch back exactly as it was on paper.

That also means a wobbly line stays wobbly. If you need a clean graphic, use the diagram option further down.

The sketch editor runs in the browser and has what you need to keep drawing:

• Select, and a hand to move the view
• Pen, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse and text
• Eraser, and inserting a picture of your own
• Colours, grouping and 150 steps of undo

“Side by side” shows the photo of the original page next to the digital sketch. That way you quickly check that everything came across, and see what you have changed since. Export finished sketches as PNG, PDF or SVG, or print them straight away.

You share a sketch by email, to view or to edit. Anyone who can edit draws along live: you see each other's cursors, chat next to the sketch and leave comments on a particular spot. If Lena asks “Can you make the bar bigger?”, you answer right there.

Sharing to edit and drawing together come with Plus and up. With Pro, Axsuro can also send every sketch you keep to a Slack channel or into Notion: as a picture with a link to edit it together in Axsuro.

With Pro, boxes and arrows on paper become a clean diagram when you want one. You get it as Mermaid code to copy (“Copy Mermaid”), as SVG or PNG, and can keep working on it with “Open in Mermaid Live”. Mermaid is a text language for diagrams that many wikis and tools display directly. That is how your flow gets into slides, Notion or the team wiki.

It works best for flows and structures: boxes, arrows and short labels. A floor plan or a free drawing is better kept as a sketch. Either way, your sketch stays as you drew it. The diagram is only added when you ask for it.

If you photograph a printed plan, say a flat's floor plan with measurements, Axsuro finds it too and marks it “Not hand-drawn”. With “Keep anyway” you take it along all the same.

Free keeps up to 10 sketches, with the editor and export. Plus and Pro keep as many as you like. Drawing together comes with Plus, the diagram from a sketch with Pro. Every new account starts with 14 days of Pro, no card. More examples are on Digitise sketches, and all plans are on Pricing.

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