irs Annotate

Computers have managed to successfully infiltrate nearly all domains of activity. This even means education, with large screen helping teachers better present a lecture, as well as enabling better interaction. In this regard, irs Annotate comes as a neat solution to turn any desktop background into a place where you can freely draw.

Lightweight and easy to use

One thing that needs to be taken into account is that the application requires Adobe AIR in order to function, since it was built on this platform. Setup takes only a little while, and you can choose to run the program right after, to check out its set of features.
A compact, transparent toolbar shows up on your desktop, fitted with a slider for brush size, and a few selection, and color options. As mentioned above, the application turns your desktop into a canvas, enabling you to perform freehand drawing with a slightly customizable brush.

Leaves more to be desired

You need to make sure that everyone is paying attention to what you’re doing, because your screen can’t be projected across the network with this tool. What’s more, there’s no built-in function to save drawings to file, but you can use the Windows screenshot utility in this regard.
The brush benefits from only a few customization options, in terms of size, which is either adjusted with a slider, or by filling in the numerical value, and color, which can be anything from the default palette. Unfortunately, transparency isn’t implemented, and accuracy can’t be relied on, unless you’re really good at drawing straight lines.
Furthermore, drawing only stays active as long as the brush is selected, but doesn’t get discarded unless you manually do so. You need to be twice as careful, with no undo option, not even an eraser tool to fine tune some areas. There’s another component with which to write down notes, but text can’t be saved, unless manually exported.

To end with

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that irs Annotate doesn’t bring anything new on the market, and the way it presents its features leaves more to be desired. There’s only one brush style you can only configure in size and color, as well as a plain notes tool, with no option to save anything whatsoever.