Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Tech Tuesday - Snagit

Blogging theme suggested by Geneabloggers

Today I am reviewing Snagit.
I love this program I learned about it at work and it is one of the tools we use to capture screen shots to make professional looking handouts.  I love it so much I purchased it for my own use at home and started using it to make my quilting handouts.  

You might ask how does this help me do genealogy?  It doesn't but what it does do is take screen shots of documents, pictures, anything that is displayed on your computer screen.  After you have captured the screen shot you can highlight, place squares, stamps or other items.  One of the other features I like is that the screen shot is not distorted and it can be re-sized. 

Let me show you a couple of ways I have used it in conjunctions to doing genealogy.

Sent to Ancestry.com asking them to fix an image
Here is a screen shot I took on Ancestry.com, showing them the wrong image.  The name on the bottom is who I was looking for.  The red boxes where added before I save it as a .jpg file.  You can change the color and thickness of the lines.  I also used this image and another one and to sent it in an email to my cousins and friends asking for their help to report the image problems.  Showing them exactly what they needed to do. 

I have used the screen shots in my blog posts, here, here and here.

I have used it in emails to my cousins asking them for more input.  The below screen shot show some of the stamps in the program, check mark, question mark and word ballons.


Showing some of the tools within Snagit
 My cousin who lives in England and who is a lot of fun sent me these pictures the other day.  The picture came as one .tif file.  She told me the information in an email and I added it to a screen shot of the picture file.  I'll send it back to her to make sure I have it correct. 


More Photos of Chaplin's, Tony's Clan.
 It also allows me to save them labeled in my computer files. 

I am sure you will come up with your own ideas on how to use Snagit while working on your genealogy.   They have a 30 day free trial on their website. 

I'm not affiliated with them, I am just a happy customer.

Happy Researching!
 






3 comments:

  1. Thank you Mary. I've been wondering about how to do some of these types of things with images. I'll take a look at Snagit.

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  2. Good ideas!! I use Snag-It at work too, but haven't broken down and purchased it for my genealogy use. Now you've given me an excuse to pay for it!!

    A couple other new options for taking screen shots, include Snippet and Microsoft Office 2010's Screen Clipping feature. Neither of these let you add text to the images, but they are tools that are available on most computers. You could then paste the screen shots in to Microsoft Word and add text boxes for labeling.

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  3. Excellent post! I've been looking for something to capture screenshots and my son also recommended Snag-it. I'm heading over to their website now!

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