5 Image Editing and Screen Capture Tools For Bloggers
September 14, 2009 by ian
If you're serious about blogging, then at some point you'll have to grab an image of your screen. And, in true Give-a-Pig-a-Pancake fashion, once you do that you'll want to edit it. Then you'll realize that video would be really cool. And so on.
Screen capture: Snapz Pro X
I'm probably old-fashioned here, but Snapz Pro X lets me capture any portion of my screen in all sorts of nifty ways. I've gotten very used to it - it's my old pair of screen-capture jeans.
Every Conversation Marketing screen capture of the last 2 years has been done on Snapz.
PC users: My apologies. Try Snagit, instead.
Screen video capture: Screenflow
Snapz includes a video capture tool, but the audio always drove me insane. ScreenFlow is a dream to use, though, with easy video capture and one of the most intuitive video editors I've ever seen.
PC Users: You have my sympathies. Try Camtasia, instead.
Screen Annotation: OmniDazzle
Sometimes, you need to outline/highlight part of the screen before you capture it. I use Omnidazzle.
PC users: I'm not sure. Anyone know of an analog to Omnidazzle for the PC?
Image editing: Fireworks
Say what you want, all you Photoshop snobs. I love Adobe Fireworks.
If you're more of a webbie than a designer, you'll find Fireworks a bit more intuitive (at least I do). The interface is straightforward, and the compression toolset is, in my experience, more effective.
Buy it here and you'll put food in my guinea pigs' mouths: Adobe Fireworks CS4
An absurdly large monitor
Yes, I had an Apple Cinema 24" display. I upgraded to a 30". I was a little embarassed, at first. But this ginormous monitor lets me have Fireworks, a browser, a few Finder windows and some other stuff all open at once. So, I can capture a screen, edit it, save it and then insert it into a blog post, all without minimizing or maximizing any windows. It truly has made me more efficient.
Plus, I can hide behind it when I'm feeling anti-social.
Buy it here and you'll feed my guinea pigs for generations: Apple Cinema 30-inch HD Flat-Panel Display
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Join the Conversation:
Shannon Evans says:
September 15, 2009 17:36
These are great editing tools for optimizing your videos. It is times like this when I regret not buying a Mac...urgh...but since I am stuck with my trust PC I will just have to settle on tool envy.