I have been using Snagit since the very beginning of my professional journey. Despite being a huge fan of the software, I was unaware of some really useful features till recently.
Many of us use Snagit for editing screenshots because it has such an amazing toolkit for this in Snagit Editor. But rarely do we pay attention to what Snagit Capture has to offer. So, in this article, we are going to look at what Snagit can do aside from advanced screenshot editing.
Before we start, a little note: I am using Version 2022.0.2.
Panoramic Screenshots
Did you ever have a situation when the area you want to capture is so large that you can’t cover it all on a laptop screen? You should either scroll it (hopefully, only once) or have a second monitor to transfer this area there so that to capture it without scrolling.
For example, in my previous article, I draw quite a long diagram that didn’t fit on my laptop screen:
The pleasure of taking several screenshots and spending significant time to glue them together is definitely below the average.
A way better solution to the problem is to leverage the Panoramic feature in Snagit Capture.
To take a panoramic screenshot of an area:
1. Open Snagit Capture and go to the Image tab;
2. In section Selection, open the drop-down option list and select Panoramic:
3. Go to the page with the content you want to capture and press the keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot with Snagit (Ctrl+Shift+P in my case);
4. Select the part of the content that fits on the screen, click on the button Start, scroll to the end of the area you want to capture, and click on the button Stop:
Alternately, I could zoom it out so to adapt it to my screen. It was not a problem since there is no text in the diagram. But if there was a text, a zoomed-out version might not look readable, hence it would be of no use to the consumer.
Extracting text
Did you know that Snagit can extract text from a screenshot? 🤩
It took me aback when I found out it was possible!
If you deal with PDFs or images with texts, this feature is a lifebuoy that will prevent you from drowning in the deep waters of retyping.
To get words from a picture
1. Open Snagit Capture and go to the Image tab;
2. In section Selection, open the drop-down option list and select Grab Text:
3. Go to the page with the text you want to capture and press the keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot with Snagit;
4. Give Snagit 2–3 seconds to “read”:
Amazing, isn’t it?!
Important notes:
- Snagit works perfectly with English texts, slightly worse with other Latin texts (French, German), and it doesn’t comprehend Cyrillic languages at all.
- I tested the feature on PDF files, .jpeg and .png pictures — every time it worked.
(almost) Update-free screenshots
Have you ever gotten goosebumps after finding out that the interface of your application had been slightly changed? And those goosebumps were about anticipating a tedious process of updating the whole chunk of screenshots all over your documentation?
If yes, the next 2 features will take this burden out of your shoulders.
The first one is blurring all unnecessary elements in screenshots.
This feature is often overlooked, especially when Technical Writers have strict deadlines. You simply don’t have enough time to polish all the screenshots, and therefore you publish a minimum viable version for each of them. However, applying this blurring tool as often as possible can save you a tremendous amount of time in the future.
Let’s get back to the very first screenshot of this article that explains the first two steps of taking Panoramic screenshots in Snagit:
And assume that this screenshot was taken during the development stage of version 2022.0.2. At some point (one day before the release), the title of section Effects is changed to Screenshot effects. While it’s a minor shift in terms of development, it may be quite a challenge when it comes to updating similar visuals all over the documentation.
What if the initial screenshot looked like this:
The second example took just a few more seconds to produce, but it certainly will pay off since it doesn’t require updates if only they do not relate specifically to the depicted elements.
To blur irrelevant content on a screenshot
- Open the screenshot and go to the top menu in Snagit Editor;
- Find Blur option (it may be available under the tab More);
- Select the intensity for blurring in the right menu:
4. With the blur cursor, select those areas you want to hide:
The second option is simplifying unnecessary elements in screenshots.
The idea is the same — to hide unimportant details in a screenshot. The implementation differs though:
To simplify a screenshot
- Open the screenshot and go to the top menu in Snagit Editor;
- Find Simplify option (it may be available under the tab More);
- Set colors for shapes that will hide unimportant elements in the picture;
- Switch the toggle button in the Auto Simplify area to On:
After step 4, Snagit will automatically put appropriate shapes on top of all elements on the screenshot. You just need to remove those covering important details:
Important notes:
- To keep your documentation consistent, choose one of the options and stick to it. In this case, diversity won’t serve us well.
Those were just four features I was happy to discover in Snagit, and there are many more to go! So, explore 🧐 and share your experiences 📝
