Saturday, October 24, 2009

Snap It!

Technical writers, researcher and bloggers usually surfs the web when searching for resources needed as additional materials for their document. When a particular page of interest is found, they “copy” it by pressing the “PrntScrn” button, open a graphic software such as Paint, paste the copied material, give it a filename and then save it.

The problem with this technique is its quite tedious and time consuming especially if you got a lot of materials to “copy”. You see, the “Print Screen method” captures the whole screen into your clipboard. If you’re interested only in a particular area of the picture, you have to do extra work of editing the file to remove the unwanted parts.

There’s another method, simpler and easier way of doing it. It’s called SnapIt from Digeus Inc. Once you have installed and set it up, the rest is straightforward as A-B-C.

For example, if you only want to “capture” the header title of this blog...

Just press the “PrntScrn” button and the cursor style will change into a cross-hair. Draw a rectangle around the area you want to grab by holding down the left mouse button while dragging it.

Release the mouse button and that’s it, the software will do the rest.

It automatically assigned a filename, save it to what ever file extension you prefer (JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF or PNG) then store it to a file folder you assigned in the SnapIt’s property box. It captures anything in your screen except a “freeze frame”.

A “freeze frame” is a “still picture” of a particular scene when you “Pause” a media player while playing a VCD, DVD, MP4 or AVI file. Other capturing software can’t do it too, but it would be great if only SnapIt has this added feature.

Bottom line is; if all you need is to capture a screen, SnapIt can do the job easily, without any hassle. But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. You can download a “trial version” here free to use for 14 days.

One more thing, before you install SnapIt; be sure your computer has Framework 2.0 installed. SnapIt won’t work without it. You may download an update from here, free of charge. If Framework 2.0 does not install properly you might need to upgrade your Windows Installer as well. You can download it too from here, also free of charge.

Good luck and happy capturing!

27 comments:

  1. tsk, galing, alam mo, ako talaga abnoy pagdating sa mga ganyan lol abnoy na abnoy, e pag open nga lang ng pc e tanda nako diko pa lam kung pano, ang nagturo pa sakin e yung anak kong kinder palang that time hahaha napaka late bloomer

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  2. minsan tuloy naiisip ko, may pakinabang naman tayo minsan dun sa mga anak nating pinag aaral natin hahaha kahit na nga mas madalas yung sarap nilang hambalusin kesa nakakatuwa hahaha kidding

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  3. Oy TZ, para sayo tong software. Mahilig kang mag cut&paste di ba? : )

    Yung mrs ko naman minsan hindi ko maintindihan. Pag makulit yung anak namin, papaluin sa pwet. Pag umiyak yung bata, yayakapin sabay hingi ng sori!

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  4. thanks for this... sayang :( too late.. i already captured the header of ALL the PEBA nominees. printscreen ako ng printscreen... crop dito.. crop doon... resize..resize... resize...

    pero thanks.. next time i'll use this! :D

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  5. Thank you so much for the information I'll give it a try, but right now I am using Windows' Snipping Tool.

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  6. Azel, sayang talaga. Naubos ang oras po sa kakapaskil at edit ng mga yan. Oras na dapat nilalaan sa BF mo! >: D

    Abou, malaking tulong talaga. Pero sa tulad mong maraming oras, PrnScrn ka nalang. : D

    Pope, that snipping tool, is it an add-on from microsoft?

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  7. Microsoft "Notebook" can also capture the screen or part of it...
    Also, without any other software too, I learned from my brother how to capture the screen by pressing ctrl-alt-PrntScreen which brings the image to the clipboard then it can be pasted to MSPaint...
    Ah, this time I need another program to save the image. :-)

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  8. Very cool. I'd like to try this one of these days.

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  9. Olay, hindi ko alam na gumagawa na rin pala ng hardware ang microsoft. : )

    Abaniko, yes, its cool pards for direct cropping of your digitized pictures.

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  10. thanks for this blogs, ill check this para di rin ako mapagod sa kakaprint screen.

    Natawa ako dun sa reply mo sa comment ni TZ. Naalala ko si shie. hehehe

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  11. great share here! quite helpful and ill try it in a while.

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  12. Yung Snipping Tool ay isang application kasama sa Windows Vista at sa Windows 7, in my case kasi I am using both, Windows Vista Ultimate ko sya unang napansin, den I tried using Windows 7, meron din syang Snipping Tool, included sya sa Windows Accessories.

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  13. 18 dollars? he he. pag-isipan ko muna. heheh

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  14. donG, it's helpful in cropping your pictures.

    Pope, kaya pala hindi ko alam. Hanggang ngayon kasi XP pa rin ang ginagamit ko. : (

    r-yo, yes, its quite an investment for a screen capturing tool, but I think in the you'll recoup it in the long run.

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  15. hardware?...did i mention "hardware"?...i don't get it...hehehe..

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  16. Nice tip bro. It does make it a lot easier to cut and paste special graphics. Tks for the tip.

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  17. Olay, Notebooks are mini version of laptops, manufactured by Apple, Dell, Acer, Hp and Compac. Microsoft makes OS and other utility software for computers. "Microsoft Notebook" is a misnomer. : )

    bw, don't mention it, bro. : )

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  18. hahahaha para sakin ba yan lol, tekat mapagaralan ng husto, salamat haha

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  19. Salamat po sa tip. I personally use Snagit naman which I also find uber-cool.

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  20. Lee, ano bang gusto mong itawag ko sayo, Lee or TZ? Ang gulo eh!

    Nebz, "G" lang pala ang nagkaiba. Palitan mo na ng "P". : )

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  21. Kenjie, malaking kaginhawa-an ito. Hindi mo na kailangang mag cropping. OT, ano ba yang OVI na yan na pinagkakaguluhan ng ibang bloggers?

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  22. ako, i've always used zapgrab. easy to use and very simple. hindi rin kailangang mag-print screen and you can grab anything as it appears in your screen. PERO I think ok din itong snaplt, kasi you can immediately save what you've captured as a file. sa zapgrab kasi kailangan mo pang i-paste somewhere.

    thanks sa tip! :)

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  23. nag-shut down ang brain ko. hehe. joke lang. madaling intindihin ang instructions mo.

    teka, wala bang copyright problems pag ganito?

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  24. very helpful when one needs to submit a banner to a site.

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  25. moonsparks, file saving is one more task eliminated if you use SnapIt. : )

    atticus, there will always be a copyright issue everytime you "capture" something in the net. I suppose, it's in the "grabbers'" discretion if they ask permission from the owner or not.

    bing, yes, especially if one needs to submit a lot of banners to a site. : )

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  26. Wow, this is a cool program. It'll reduce a lot of time of editing the image if you need to use the Print screen button.

    Imagine the time that you can spend in other things, this is great!

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