Make Tech Easier » screen capture

Skitch – Powerful Screen Capture Application for Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:22 +0000

I never thought that I would find screen capture utility as one of my indispensable tool. But I do. So it’ only natural that I keep on searching for the best alternative to fill in my need.

Once I’ve settled with Jing, a nice multi platform screen capture app. Then one of my Mac-user friend recommend Skitch – a Mac only alternative. After trying it out, I was hooked. Skitch has several features that I can’t find in Jing.

Screencapture tool plus image editor

Most of the screen capture utilities that I came across so far is usually limited to one main feature only: making screenshots. Skitch has many more features that complement the screen capturing process.

You could say that this app is also a light image editor because you can use it as one. You could just open any image file and edit it using Skitch. But before we dig deeper into the features, let’s adjust the basic settings.

My first favorite place to visit every time I open any application for the first time is the Preferences. Same thing goes here.

Open Skitch,

Click on the “Tools” menu

and choose Preferences (or hit Command + Comma on the keyboard).

Even though you can spend some time here and adjust many values according to your liking, I think the most important items here is the Snapping settings. Here you will decide what Shortcut keys to use to do Crosshairs (part of the screen), Fullscreen and Frame (adjustable location of part of the screen) snaps.

Now for the main show, let’s see how this app does what it’s built to do: screen capture. The one snap option that I use the most is the crosshairs. Just hit the pre-defined shortcut key and you’ll have the crosshairs lines appear, ready to capture the screen.

You could click and drag the lines to define the part of the screen that you want to capture. Or you could just click on a window and Skitch will capture that window for you.

Then the image that you’ve just capture will be opened in Skitch editor. Here you can do some light editing to enhance the image.

There are basic drawing tools at the left vertical bar such as pencil, rectangle, fill, text, and arrow; there are additional tools at the right vertical bar such as color picker, undo and clear buttons; file name and file info at the bottom bar, webpost button and settings also at the bottom; Settings button, Photos button (to open any image from the hard drive), Save button, and History button (to view recently captured images) are all at the top bar.

To resize image to the size that you desired, drag any corner of the window. To crop the image into the area that you prefer, click and drag the edges of the image.

And finally, to quick save the image, just click and drag the “Drag Me” button at the bottom bar to the location that you’ve want: in finder or in any other application such as Mail or Text Edit.

Now about the name bar at the bottom, you could write the name of the file and decide the image format before dragging it and the image will be saved using that preferences.

Using Skitch, you have the option to save the image into web location. Click the little arrow next to the Webpost button and choose “Open Webpost Settings”

You’ll have the Skitch.com as the default location (registered at the first installation of the app). To add more location, just click the plus button,

And fill in the necessary data according to the types of your account. There are several options here ranging from MobileMe to FTP to Flickr.com.

Final Notes

There are still many other things haven’t been discussed here about Skitch, including the ability to take a snap of itself. The best way to find them out is to explore and use the app yourself.

And as much as I like and prefer Skitch over other screen capturing tools, there’s one thing that I find a little bit annoying: that the only option to save the captured image is by dragging it to our desired location. It would be better if the developer add configurable buttons to save the image to several pre-defined locations in the hard drive (like the one that Jing has).

Sometimes, dragging images could be troublesome. Especially for those who doesn’t have wide area for mousing.

Have you tried Skitch? Do you know other alternative of screen capture tools for Mac? Share using the comment below.

Skitch – Powerful Screen Capture Application for Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Capture Screenshots Without Any Software

tehseen — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:35:01 +0000

Being a blogger, I live by the motto of working anytime and from anywhere. Hence, I have often found myself on a friend’s computer trying to do a quick post. Most of the tools I use are all online but I have often felt the lack of a good tool that could capture screenshots. I feel awkward downloading software and add-ons on somebody else’s computer, and the print screen option is unacceptable since it means compromising on image quality.

Motivated by a need, I tried to find a way to solve this problem and found Aviary.com. Here’s how it works:

1. Taking Screenshots:

No matter which browser you are using, simply go to the address bar and add aviary.com/ before the web page you are trying to capture. So if you want to take a screenshot of Yahoo.com you will type aviary.com/http://yahoo.com in your address bar.

If you find this hard to remember, you can also go to Aviary.com/launch/falcon and enter the URL of the web page that you want to capture.

Following either of these methods would take a screen capture of the web page and open it in an online image editor. If you want to capture only a certain part of a web page, you can crop the image once it has been captured.

2. Editing Screenshots:

Aviary is also an online image editor providing almost all standard features that you can find in a regular image editing tool. You can draw shapes and lines, add text and arrows and use brushes.

You can also use the editor to resize, crop, rotate or flip an image. While resizing, you can simple slide the width or the height bar to a desired specification. The aspect ratio of the image would remain locked during resizing so it does not go out of proportion. Similarly, you can flip the image vertically or horizontally, or rotate it at any desired angle from 0 to 360.

If you think you need more powerful editing tools, you can open the Advanced Image Editor. Features like adding effects to images and working with a color palette are also available within the image editor. You can also use the zoom tool to view an enlarged version of the image and add outlines and shadows to the image.

Saving Images:

Once you are done editing, just click on the “Save To Desktop” button to save the images on your local drive. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free account and host your images online free of cost.

Tip: If you simply want to share the image with somebody without downloading or uploading it anywhere, click on the “Save & Host Online” button, but when it prompts you to register for an account, click “Cancel”. After this, you will see a small “Share this creation” link which will provide you with a permanent URL of your image that you can share with others.

Aviary also offers a number of other on-the-fly image tools that you can use free of cost. These include an Image Editor, a Color Editor, an Effects Editor, a Vector Editor and an Image Markup tool. If you regularly use Firefox, you can also access the Aviary tools through their Firefox Add-on.

What other websites do you use to capture your screenshots?

How To Capture Screenshots Without Any Software originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Easily Create A Screencast With Wink

fasil — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:42:37 +0000

Screencast is often a good tool to demonstrate the functionality of an application. However most people find it difficult or complicated to create your own screencast and add custom text/annotation to it. If you are one of those, Wink will be the application you need to turn screencasting into an easy task.

Wink is a tutorial and presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. Wink is also available in several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Danish, Spanish, Serbian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified/Traditional Chinese.

Here’s how we use Wink to create screencast easily.

Download and install Wink on your Windows platform [currently Wink supports only Windows 98, 2000 and XP].

1. Open Wink software and create new Wink project (File -> New). The project wizard window will show up.

2. Check the box “Start by capturing screenshots“, “Hide Wink Window“. In the dropdown bar, select “Screen“. Enter the region (screen size) that you want to capture and the timeframe of the screencast. Click OK.

3. The next screen will show you the hotkey to start the screen capturing. Shortcut keys that you have to remember are Alt + Pause, and Shift + Pause (key near scroll lock button on your keyboard). Click on the “Minimize To Tray” button to minimize the Wink window to the system tray.

4. Press ALT + PAUSE to start recording. Once the screencasting is started, you will be able to see changes in the Wink icon in the system tray.

5. Do all your demo on your screen. Once you are done, click ALT + PAUSE again to stop.

6. Right click the Wink icon and select Finish Capture to complete the project.

7. You should now see the entire frames of your screencast as thumbnail images at bottom of the Wink window .

8. Select the frame in which you want to add the text, images, preset shapes from the properties bar .

9. Preview the frame in which you have added text and preset shape to it.

10. Once you have completed all your editing, we will now configure it to be saved as .swf format. Go to Property -> Settings. Select Macromedia Flash (*.swf) in the Output File Type.

11. Select Project -> Render to save the file.

12. You should now see the output file as swf format. You can also save the project as PDF or PostScript format

Wink is a freeware and you can download, install and use it for free. Don’t forget to see the tutorial that comes with it for more usage detail.

How To Easily Create A Screencast With Wink originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Gscrot: A Powerful Screen Capture Tool For Linux

Damien — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:37:15 +0000

Few days ago, I wrote about the various ways that I used to capture screenshots on my Ubuntu machine. In the comments, Imd mentioned about Gscrot being a great alternative screen capture tool. After checking it out, I must admit that it is by far the best screen capture software that I have seen in Linux platform.

GScrot is a GTK+ 2.0 screenshot application written in perl. It covers all features of common command line tools like scrot or import and adds reasonable new features combined with a comfortable GUI using the GTK+ 2.0 framework.

To install Gscrot in Ubuntu Intrepid:

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gscrot/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gscrot/ubuntu intrepid main

Save and close the file. Back to your terminal,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gscrot

Gscrot is now known as Shutter.

To install Shutter on your Ubuntu Intrepid

First add the PPA’s key to your system

wget -q http://shutter-project.org/shutter-ppa.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Open the apt sources.list file.

gksu gedit /etc/sources.list

Add the following repository to the end of the file. Save and close the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/shutter/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/shutter/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Update and install the application

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install shutter

Open Gscrot (Application -> Accessories -> Gscrot – Screenshot Tool).

There are several options that you can use to take screenshots: Selection, Full Screen, Window, Section and Web.

The Selection button allows you to capture a selected region of the screen. There are two modes for region selection – Simple and Advanced. The Simple mode is just like the Compiz way where you drag the crosshair cursor across the region that you want to capture. In the Advanced mode, a lightbox canvas will first load up. You can then define, move, resize the region that you want to capture. When you are done, simply press Enter to capture the region.

The Fullscreen button is to take a quick snapshot of the full screen

The Window button allows you to take a screenshot of any active or sub-window.

The Section button allow you to select a section within the window.

The Web button is an interesting one. You enter the URL of the site and get Gscrot to retrieve the full screenshot of the site. No browser required.

Full screenshot of Make Tech Easier

The best of Gscrot comes after you have taken the screenshot. There are various effects (also known as pulgins) that you can use to enhance your screenshot.

Click to enlarge

The result after applying Raise border and Jigsaw piece 1 plugins

There is also a draw function where you can add drawing or annotation to the images.

You can also upload your screenshots to specific image hosting sites such as ubuntu-pics.de, imagebanana.com and imageshack.us

Conclusion

After reading the review and seeing the screenshot, are you excited? I am not sure about you, but I am definitely impress by Gscrot. If you are looking for a standalone screen capture app, I strongly recommend Gscrot.

Gscrot: A Powerful Screen Capture Tool For Linux originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Ways To Grab Screenshots In Ubuntu

Damien — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:28:57 +0000

When I am writing post for Make Tech Easier, I love to take plenty of screenshots as I feel they can make the explanation clearer and easier. Over the year, I have also discovered several ways to take screenshot on my Ubuntu machine. If you are looking for one, I have compiled a list of screen capture tools that you can use in Ubuntu.

Gnome-Screenshot

Gnome-screenshot is the default screen capture tool in Ubuntu. It is simple and easy to use. You can choose to capture the whole desktop or the current window and you are able to set a delay before activating the capture. It is useful for those who wanted a lightweight and minimal screen capture tool.

Gnome-screenshot can be accessed from Appications -> Accessories -> Take Screenshots.

Compiz

Compiz comes with a screenshot plugin that allows you to take screenshot quickly and easily. It consist of the bare minimum and few or none configuration options. You simply press the Windows button on your keyboard, left click your mouse and drag the cursor to cover the area you want to snap. That’s it. For those who want a quick snapshot of a specified region, Compiz is the best.

To activate the screenshot plugin, you will have to install CompizConfig Settings Manager and activate it from there.

GIMP

GIMP has a screen capture function that can be found several levels down the menubar. One of the advantage of using GIMP is that you can immediately edit the screenshots and save it in the file format that you want it to be. In addition, this is the screen capture tool that I used everytime I wanted to take a snap of a window inside a virtual machine.

GIMP is useful if you want to take a comprehensive screenshot that you can edit immediately. If you just want a quick snapshot, I don’t think it is worth the trouble to load up GIMP, navigate several levels down the menubar before you can take a shot.

If you are using Gimp 2.6, the screen capture function can be found in File -> Create -> Screenshot

KSnapshot

One of my favorite screenshot tool is Ksnapshot (Click the link to install). It is a KDE application and is not available in the GNOME desktop. You will have to install it to use it. For me, I find that Ksnapshot is more like a combination of Gnome-screenshot and GIMP. You get to choose which region to capture – full screen or active window, and after you have captured it, you can either save it as a image file in various format or you can send to another application, such as GIMP, for editing.

If you don’t mind having a large bunch of KDE file in your Gnome desktop, then Ksnapshot is the one to go for.

Webkut

Webkut is an Adobe Air application meant for taking screenshot of Web page. It is like a browser where you can load up the webpage by entering the URL in the address bar and select the region to capture. One thing that I like about Webkut is that I can adjust the size of the canvas before I take the screenshot. This is useful when I need to take a screenshot of specific width and height.

ScreenGrab

ScreenGrab is a Firefox extension that can capture the screenshot of any web page. Once installed, you can access the ScreenGrab options via the context menu (right mouse click). There are a few options that are available to you. One of them is the ability to capture the whole web page even though it is out of your screen. This can save you the trouble of taking several screenshots and stitching them together. You can also choose to capture only the visible portion or a partial region of the whole desktop.

Webshots

Webshots is another Firefox extension for screen capture. The option is rather limiting as it only allows you to capture the full page. One thing good is that it can be quickly activated with the shortcut key Alt + W.

For Seasoned Windows User: Easy Capture

For those seasoned Windows users who just got on to the Ubuntu platform and are not comfortable with any of the above native Linux apps, I have found Easy Capture (a Windows screen capture application) to work well under Wine. It is like a mini GIMP where you can take screenshots and do some simple editing before saving it in the file format you want.

Which one is your favorite screen capture app in Ubuntu?

Ways To Grab Screenshots In Ubuntu originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)