So how exciting can a screen capture program be? You hit a button
and it just takes a snap shot of what's ever currently displayed on your
monitor, right? You can do the same thing with Windows Print Screen
button, right? WRONG!
The latest version of SnagIt is out. And if you've never thought about how
useful a program like this can be, you might be in for a few surprises. Over
the next couple months, I'll provide you with some indepth insight into this
cool program. This article will give you a general overview of SnagIt's features.
Next month, we'll dig a little deeper. The month after that...digging a little
deeper yet.
And three of our TechTrax readers will be lucky enough to follow along with
their own copies of SnagIt, because the good people over at TechSmith.com are
dishing out three free copies of this way cool new version of the most popular
capture program on the market! Yup...get yourself over to this month's TechTrax
Drawing page and enter your name for a chance to win one of these copies.
But hurry! You only have until Friday, February 20, 2004
to get your name entered, as we will draw our winners on February
21st (Chicago Time)!
SnagIt has been a long time favorite screen capture program for those folks
responsible for producing manuals and other documents that contain images
retrieve from computer screen displays. What better way to explain a process
to a user than including actual photos of the software program. And if you
add some annotations and arrows to direct them to the exact moves needed
to perform various tasks, even better.
Creating descriptive images like the one above are pretty simple if you have
the right tools. Being a dedicated image program, SnagIt gives you the tools
you need to easily create fast illustrations to include in your instruction
documentation.
However, SnagIt's newest version gives you a lot more than just the ability
to take a picture of what's on your screen.
You'll not only get a sophisticated capture program, that allows you to get
captures from your monitor display, but you can capture video, too! Capture
your mouse moves around your screen to demonstrate a program. SnagIt even
allows you to quickly gather all the images from a web site with a couple
clicks. Or capture text to drop into a program like Word for further
formatting.
In the Editor portion of the program you'll not only find the ability to modify
your captures with text, arrows, backgrounds, borders and much more, but
you also get a Studio. Like a mini version of Microsoft's Visio, you can choose
from galleries of images to create your own diagrams for explaining processes
such as work flow.
And if that wasn't cool enough, you also get a Batch Conversion utility that
allows you to quickly and easily convert a whole folder of images in seconds.
Change their size, add borders or even adjust resolution to all your captures
with a click. A fantastic time saver!
SnagIt also gives you a cataloging feature that allows you to easily sort
and display your images. Display thumbnail images to quickly find the image
you need. Or organize your photos in groups.
SnagIt will even create web pages for you to allow you to display your photos
in beautiful ways! Follow a simple wizard and, in a few seconds, you can
create a web page full of images ready to post to your web site!
And yet another very useful feature is the ability to send any printable file
to SnagIt's printer feature. This allows you to instantly turn a document
into an image. Why do that? Well, what if you had a document you wanted
to show someone, but didn't want to allow them to change the file? Rather
than messing around with converting to PDF files, you can create a locked
image file by just printing your document to SnagIt.
Next month we'll dig into some of these features and I'll show you how much
time you can save with SnagIt. Some of those tasks that seem like such work
can quickly be cut down to size, as long as you have the right tools. We'll
look at some solutions to issues you may have never realized could be accomplished
so quickly.
So be sure to come back to learn more. But in the meantime, be sure to sign
up to try to win your very own copy of SnagIt at: TechTrax
SnagIt Drawing Entry.
And if you want to purchase your own copy of SnagIt now, click here: Buy
SnagIt.
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