An old OSX app called Skitch was the epitome of screenshot annotation tools (before it got enshittified). I’ve attached a screenshot I took with it from 2015:
Annotations had a selectable color, but then also a fat white outline and a dark drop shadow, making them easily visible in any screenshot, regardless of background color. I think any annotation (lines, arrows, boxes) could have them, but it was especially useful for text.
I love Spectacles new annotation features, but it could use a bit more polish. Currently text can optionally have a subtle shadow, which looks nice, but doesn’t add to legibility on a dark background.
Can we make the shadow configurable (blur, radius, color), as well as add an optional outline with options for color & thickness?
you can change the font to one of the outline type fonts but then you either lose the text color or the outline becomes the text color
i couldn’t find a font with a built in white border without resorting to one of those font generator sites which only let you take home pick of the font… at least for free.
I think it would be a good idea to add optional outlines for text and settings for shadows. It hadn’t been done before simply because it would have required a lot of work when I was working on previous major changes to the annotation system.
That text really does “pop” on the background there! I would use that constantly - I remember some tool that we had on our corporate PCs back 15 years ago that did the same thing, and it was great for putting together user guides for the hacked-together Access database tools I made at the time
