5 Image Editing and Screen Capture Tools For Bloggers

Ian Lurie

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.

screenflow

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.

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.

fireworks

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.

30 inch cinema

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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Comments

  1. 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.

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