Skitch Website to be Archived, Image Sharing Rolled Into Evernote

Evernote sent out an email announcement to Skitch users this morning that the popular image annotation tool is being integrated even further into Evernote. Starting October 10, the website skitch.com will be archived and all the online features of Skitch will be done through Evernote instead of its own website. While public and secret images will remain on the website, all private images will be removed from the site and Skitch users will no longer be able to sign in to Skitch.com.

Skitch has been an invaluable tool for those whose work heavily involves image annotation and resizing (LOLCATS FTW). The app is about as practical as it gets. You can easily take an existing image and draw circles, rectangles, arrows, and add text on the image. This Inquisitr piece from 2008 has a list of great uses for Skitch.

So what is changing? Everything that you share through Skitch will be accessible through Evernote Service. Your Skitch images will be delivered to your Evernote apps and the Evernote website unless they're private images, in which case Evernote recommends you to download them using the Skitch Image Download Tool.

If you choose to use the tool, the images on your Skitch account will be collected, compressed, and packaged into a zip file which can then be reuploaded to Evernote as private images. A link to download the zip file will be sent to the email address that you have confirmed with Skitch.

There's been no announcement as to what will change with regards to the apps but since signing on to the website won't be supported anymore, Evernote sign in is expected to be made mandatory and Skitch sign in to be removed sometime soon. Currently the Mac app still allows users to sign in using their old Skitch credentials.

Evernote's integration means the images will be much more easily searchable and you'll be able to search and tag them while on the go. Although Skitch already has tags, the feature is only available on the website, not on its mobile apps.

Skitch had been exclusively a Mac app until Evernote released Skitch for Android late last year and an iPad app soon followed although strangely there's been no word of an iPhone app being in the works.

Since we're on the subject of Evernote, Troy Malone, the company's general manager for Asia Pacific will be at Sparxup 2012 this October 3-5 as one of the speakers at the conference. Evernote is also a sponsor for Sparxup hackathon in which developers are being challenged to create apps and services using API and resources from Evernote, Foursquare and Nokia.