One of the things that’s . . . interesting about working with, say, wikis or blogs is that such work often isn’t formally supported by your local IT. They’ve got enough to do with viruses and e-mail snafus and Blackboard/Vista problems, that they can’t explain to the student how to log in to some third-party wiki provider. You need to provide those instructions, and you need to make them as simple as possible.
Step-by-step written instructions are nice, but there’s something comforting about grabbing a screenshot of whatever site you’re using. And if you can mark it up? Well! And if you can make a movie of it–even better. And “clearer instructions” are only one benefit of showing screenshots or screencasts.
This series will look at lots of different tools for getting what’s on your screen out into the world.
We’re going to start with Skitch, which is a dreamy little app for capturing, marking up, and sharing screenshots. It is Mac-only, but you gotta dance with who you came to the dance with. Skitch is actually more than an app; it’s an app linked to a photohosting service (its own, or flickr), which makes it incredibly easy to share content. Here’s what it looks like:
Skitch lives in your menubar, like so:
Anytime you want to take a picture of your screen, you just invoke Skitch by clicking on the heart in your menubar. Nice, right? When you’re done marking your screenshot up, you’ll see a link in the bottom right that says Share! or webpost, and you click it. Or, just drag Skitch to wherever you want the image to be (for example, in a document). Michael Warf’s handy video shows how Skitch works.
Dead simple. I used Skitch to make the screenshots for my class notes assignment, and really for just about anything I’ve had to write instructions for over the past year or so. Probably the only thing I ever use to mark up photos is Flickr’s notes feature, which will be covered in a followup post. (Briefly: Skitch is nice because you can markup screenshots or photos; Flickr’s nice because other people can markup the photo.)
How do you take and markup screenshots? (Windows or Linux users–I’m looking at you! The ProfHacker crew is shockingly Mac-centric.)
Image by flickr user evanosherow under a CC license. (Impressively minimalist Mac desktop.)
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12 Responses to Screengrabs, screenshots, screencasts and more
Tonya Howe - September 22, 2009 at 10:27 am
I, too, am a non-Mac user, though recently I’ve been wondering whether my reserve on that score is mere pigheadedness, or something else. At any rate, I often use Jing, too–the files are small, they can be hosted by a companion service, downloaded and stored on your own server, or uploaded to something like vimeo. You only get 5 minutes with the free version, but that’s actually a good thing for me!
Julie Meloni - September 21, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Windows user here. I use GIMP, SnagIt, and also an app called Window Clippings. There are also online editors like Picnik and Pixlr that I’ve been known to use/try/recommend at different times.
Jason B. Jones - September 21, 2009 at 2:49 pm
@Josh: I love iShowU! I’ll be posting more about that soon.
@GC: I think George uses Jing a lot–I think he’s been pulling together a proper post about that.
Kevin Brady - September 21, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Jing is a nice little application for creating screenshots. We have used it with both Mac and PC.
Josh Fishburn - September 21, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the highlighting of Skitch, an app that I love and constantly wonder how much Plasq will charge for it when it finally comes out of beta. The built-in sharing is great, but my favorite feature is being able to link it to your own FTP server for uploading and sharing images.
I’d also recommend iShowU for screencasts to Mac Users. Easy to use, fast, and less expensive than most other mac screencasting apps: http://store.shinywhitebox.com/
GC Fiedler - September 21, 2009 at 11:11 am
Screensteps is cross platform (Mac & Windows) and does screenshots and integrates them into manuals. Very handy for documentation. Your “class notes assignment” may be ideal for Screensteps.
On Macs, Skitch is sexy (love those bright annotation colors and free for now), but there is also GrabUp (screenshots), Screenflick (screen movies), ScreenFlow (screen movies), LittleSnapper (screenshots), and my favorite, Snapz Pro X (screen shots and movies).
I sometimes use Jing (movies), but less lately.
Janice - September 21, 2009 at 10:13 am
Mac-only? Nooooo! shakes fist
I use a stand-alone program since I do a lot of graphics editing. In my case, that’s PaintShop Pro but I highly recommend GIMP which is free, runs on Windows and Linux machines and is a very full-featured image editing program on a par with PSP or PS: http://www.gimp.org/
The only problem is that casual screenshot-grabbers and image editors find these programs too powerful and intimidating. So they come to me. I’m thinking of playing around with MWSnap to see how easy that is to master: http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html
Candace - September 21, 2009 at 10:24 am
I’m on Ubuntu and just made a pile of screenshots for a recent post on transcribing oral history. I use the built in screenshot utility under Accessories > Take Screenshot. For this recent post I used “capture current window only” but there’s also a capture entire desktop feature. You can also automatically add a drop shadow. I especially like setting a delay on the camera which allows me to F11 to a fullscreen browser window so no one knows I sometimes work with 30 tabs open. To mark it up I use the pencil tool in the Gimp.
Billie - September 21, 2009 at 9:43 am
As a member of the ProfHacker crew, I think it’s important to note that I’m not a MAC user (:-0), so Skitch won’t work for me, but I’m a huge fan of SnagIt by Tech Smith makers of Jing and Camtasia). It does many of the same thinks Skitch does, apparently. SnagIt can capture screenshots, fragments of what’s visible on the screen, rolling screens, video on a screen…… it has a free 30-day trial download.
dance - September 23, 2009 at 12:32 am
And if you can make a movie of it–even better.
Really? because video is a slow and inefficient medium to communicate directions, and I have a much harder time following a cursor on a video to learn a set of steps, as opposed to reading text that I can follow at my own pace, and quickly review whenever necessary. There’s a lot of video-for-the-sake-of-video out there, and I don’t think it’s helpful.
Will have to check out Screensteps, though, and a fan of Skitch. The one-click upload is unbeatable.
Jason B. Jones - September 23, 2009 at 12:42 am
Fair point–I was too glib–but what I like about video is that it can (obviously) give a sense of how long or short something takes. So, for example, I’ll use screenshots to actually give instructions, mostly for the reasons you give, but I’ll use a short video to convey the supplemental message, “you can do it, without too much pain!”
Frank Miller MD - September 26, 2009 at 9:47 am
Thanks Ms. Billie. I live in both Mac and PC worlds, am a remote teaching triple boarded psychiatrist, the shrink for the Cherokee tribe in very western NC on the ‘Rez and still teach at five medical school since I was Duke Univ faculty for 20 years before my Cherokee wife realized her/our ambition to work in Cherokee and settle there for her family. I love Macs at home but have to live in the PC Windows world and like both. Now I am movoing online lectures and podcasts to psych residents as I just cannot do the travelling anymore to the area med schools, spend a day teaching, stay overnight and drive back to Cherokee, takes too much time and I dont enjoy travelling anymore and listening to Continuing Medical Education CDs on the CD playing radio in my car gets old…and since I am on call to my tribal practice even when I am away since I am the ONLY psychiatrist there being away is more of a hassle than a pleasure trip even if it is for teaching. So I was glad to hear about the Windows screen capture programs and will give Snag It another college try as I tried it years ago when it first came out and was a dud for me.
Frank Miller MD
Cherokee NC