5 Image Editing and Screen Capture Tools For Bloggers

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.