Underdraw: Trace Drawing

Underdraw is a trace drawing aid for paper and a real pencil. Fix your phone above your paper and the camera shows the paper on the screen with your picture laid over it, faint: look at the screen and draw along its lines. Or lay thin paper over the screen and trace the picture as it shines through.

★ UNDER THE CAMERA
Hold the phone 20 to 35 cm above your paper - on a phone stand, a glass or a pile of books - and keep it level. The back camera's live picture fills the screen and your picture sits over it at the opacity you choose, so you see your pencil and the line you are following together. Any paper, any size of drawing, in good light. The torch helps in a dim room.

★ ON THE SCREEN, LIKE A LIGHTBOX
Lay the phone flat, put thin paper over the screen, and trace what shows through. No camera is needed. Underdraw turns this screen's own brightness up while you trace and gives it back when you leave; your phone's brightness setting is never changed.

★ PLACE IT EXACTLY
Move, size and turn the picture with two fingers, or with buttons that move it a little at a time and turn it one degree at a time. Mirror it left to right or top to bottom. Fit it to the screen or reset it, each with an Undo. Set the opacity anywhere from 5% to 100%. Every picture keeps its own placement.

★ LOCK IT
Lock hides every control and freezes the picture, so a hand, a sleeve or the paper brushing the screen moves nothing, and the screen stays on while you draw. Unlocking takes two taps in two places: the lock, then Unlock.

★ A GRID AND AN OUTLINE
Lay a grid of squares over the picture - 2, 3, 4, 6 or 8 across its shorter side - to carry its proportions by hand; the grid moves with the picture. Turn a photo into its outline, dark lines or light, with a strength control, and trace its edges as a first sketch.

★ YOUR PICTURES STAY ON YOUR PHONE
Pick any picture from your phone with Android's photo picker. Underdraw keeps a private copy so you can come back to it, and that copy is never uploaded, shared or backed up. The camera's live picture is only shown on the screen: it is never recorded, kept or sent. No account, no subscription, and nothing behind a video.

★ PICTURES YOU MAY TRACE
Trace only pictures you have the right to copy: your own photos and drawings, or pictures whose owner allows it. Underdraw comes with no library of pictures - the ones you trace are yours.

Ads: one full-screen ad now and then, only when you go back to your pictures from a picture you traced for two minutes or more - never while you trace, never for the first picture you trace after opening the app, and never two within a quarter of an hour. No banners. The ads are the one part of Underdraw that goes online.

Privacy policy: https://dash-fusion.github.io/privacy/list-tracing