I just came from the mysterious website of cjmcqueen (the about section is empty so I don’t know who this person is, but I believe he/she is a technical writer).
She (queen) tells us that she just returned from STC, Society for Technical Communication and the SnagIt praising just had no end. She heard “I love SnagIt” more time than she could count 🙂
That’s very nice and I can only but to agree. How easy it is to use SnagIt to capture exactly what you want if you are doing a tutorial or presentation and need certain captures in an already preset mode, you can’t go wrong with SnagIt.
I will definitely return to this subject and am going to hunt down some technical writers to see why they like to use Snagit so much, how to best use SnagIt for technical writing and so on.
Until next time 😉
Peter
Peter:
I’m a guy. 🙂 I’ve been dabbling with blogging for only a little while, so sorry there wasn’t much information on my site about me. And, that post I made was just a test for some things I want to do in the future… I’m honestly surprised that anyone found it. I was assuming I had some security by obscurity. 🙂 Thanks for checking it out!
Just to answer some questions, I was a Technical Writer a couple months ago, but was hired at TechSmith as an Instructional Designer. Right now I work with the SnagIt team and on a few other projects that haven’t been released.
Great to see that someone else is blogging about SnagIt!
– Chris
Hello Chris,
Sorry for the mistaken identity 😉
Happy to have found your blog and curious about what you will come up with regarding technical writing.
Congrats to joining the Techsmith team!
Peter
Snagit Guide
Hi there,
I’m a technical writer in the Twin Cities and I was probably one of the people at the STC conference praising SnagIt. I LOVE it! Sometimes Photoshop is too much trouble to do a quick crop on an image, add a simple red circle, or create a basic “you are here” arrow. SnagIt’s editor makes all of these a breeze. Plus, I frequently need screen captures from the engineers I work with. They use the Alt+PrtScn command, which often gets more than I need. I just snag the part I want and away I go!
I have this software on both of my computers at home as well. Because Web sites come and go so frequently, it’s nice to have a tool that captures an entire page.
I heartily recommend this tool. It’s easy to use, inexpensive, and makes you look like you know what you’re doing.
Cat
I am still trying to get the callout tool functioning the way I want it to.
The SnagIt site and tutorial have not been as much help as I would have hoped.
Briefly put, I want be able to put a callout right in my capture and add text to explain what the capture is or what the user is supposed to do.
I can do this with balloon shapes, but not with arrow shapes. Don’t know what I doing incorrectly.
I’m a technical writer and I use SnagIt for screen shots of graphs where I don’t want to see the toolbars and for capturing menu items. I love the way I can do a time delay so that I can pull down the menus and capture them. It’s one of the essential tools for your toolbox.
I just started using SnagIt, and would invite it to join me in matrimony if I were not already married. Everything I’ve tried, and that includes callouts, has worked the way that I imagined it would. It’s not been necessary to read the documentation.
SnagIt may be a boon to tech writers, but it’s showing the way to its own demise. The distant and illiterate future will have no need of manuals, instruction sheets or help files. Every tool or process (even rocket surgery) will be as simple to operate as a shovel.
I used to use the editing features of ACDSee, but Snag-It does everything the other tool did, and much more. It just works. It is now an indispensable part of my tech writing tool chest.
Question for the Help creators over there:
Why isn’t capturing “Multiple CAPTURES” in the TOC? I’ve found capturing multiple AREAS (of a screen) and Multiple Captures should follow that topic in the TOC.
The only way I have been able to find the instructions for capturing mulitple windows and auto-naming them is to search and then plow through all the search results until I find the instructions. They are not in a really intuitive place, and I don’t do this often enough to remember how to do it every time.
Other than that, I really prefer Snag-It over any other tool to get and edit my screen captures. I used to be a big Full-Shot fan, but Snag-It has overtaken and passed them now.
Snag-It has everything else I need to get captures and fix them up for documentation.
Just please add Multiple Captures into the TOC –> Capture Input –> Capture Mode and Input Combinations –> Capturing Multiple Windows (Objects?) Sequentially with Autonumbering.
Thanks for a great product!
I started using Snag-It almost 10 years ago, and have watched it evolve from a really good tool, to an excellent tool.
I love being able to define my capture, a window, the screen, an area on the screen, drop down lists, etc. I also love being able to use features to apply formatting (borders, etc.) to a list of images, batch convert images to another image file format, callouts, etc.
I also really like Camtasia and have used it several times to create short screen demos that I can then put in the online help.
It’s one tool that techwriters should always have.
If you’re taking suggestions for Snagit docs, make the autonumber autocapture thing clearer.
Otherwise, it’s terrific. I’ve been using it for maybe six years, and have no complaints. It’s the ONLY tool that could grab our more-than-one-screen shots (scrolling) in our very wordy application.
I use SnagIt at work and Gadwin PrintScreen for any screen-capture stuff I have to do at home. Frankly, if Gadwin PrintScreen resized images cleanly (it doesn’t), I wouldn’t use SnagIt at all.
I don’t like the look and feel of the interface (does everything in UI design these days have to be so shiny and obtrusive?); and I don’t like how slow it is compared to the smaller, more stripped-down GPS. I don’t use half the features in it.
Also, one thing that GPS does that SnagIt does not do is let you drop the border of your capture onto what you’re capturing, and then manually adjust it by dragging and dropping the capture borders, rather than the sort of “elastic” feel that the SnagIt capture has, where it takes. I don’t like that SnagIt takes the capture automatically as soon as you release the mouse button. My fine motor control is not that good (minor physical disability), and, while it doesn’t get in the way most of the time, I’ve ruined more screencaps by “missing” with SnagIt than I care to count.
I don’t suppose you’d consider adding that as an option, would you?
I’ve used Snag-It in the past and really found it to be very useful and intuitive to use. We don’t currently use it, but it’s not because I haven’t asked! I think I’ll download and install the free version since I can’t get them to purchase the regular version.
I have used Snagit for ages and ages (since version 4 or maybe lower)
I like it a lot, but I dont like the new interface at all, prefer the old one!
Lots of pretty good comments here but not as in-depth as I needed to evaluate Snagit.
Wanted to know about how callouts, arrows, etc. work. On the tech communicators Yahoo HATT listserve, good answers today to my question:
“What is best screen capture app for arrows, callouts, etc.?”
Snagit wins hands down, with about 5 posts so far.
Is there any site that compares screen capture apps side by side?
Hello Tim,
I don’t have a screen capture comparison chart, but I would sure be interested if there is one.
Snagit is the winner when it comes to graphic implementation into the screen captures, such as including arrows, callouts etc. I have tested a few other tools and nothing comes close to it.
I will send you an email now, with a few examples.
All the best,
Peter – Your Snagit Guide
Hi-
I’m a technical writer, and I use Snag-It on a daily basis, though I know I haven’t even scratched the surface of this great tool. It is an excellent, intuitive way to get great-looking screenshots, and to edit the shot to bring out important aspects of the user interface. PhotoShop is great, but its complexity is too much when it comes to editing a screenshot. Snag-it does its job well and with finesse!