Manual screenshot markup tool?

[ianbuckley 0]

I am updating some of our manuals for our control systems to include updates to manufacturer software. I have been using the MWSnap3 application that was listed in the "Useful stuff" thread. It is very handy, but unless I am missing something, it does not allow for drawing on the captured images. I want to be able to do things like draw circles around parts of the image and make notes on the image for illustration. This button on the toolbar does this, that one does that... What do you guys use for marking up screenshots for manuals? Thanks for any tips.

[JRoss 84]

I do more company website stuff than manuals, so this may not be the best option, but I use GIMP. It's an open source package that is most similar to Adobe Photoshop. Very powerful, but is rather complex for simple things.

[Nathan 7]

I like Snagit from Tech Smith for simple documentation. It's no Photoshop or Gimp, but great for docs and screenshots.

[TConnolly 13]

Probably not what you want to hear... but I use MSPaint. I set text on transparent backgrounds and use the standard circle and line tools.

[tragically1969 0]

I second Snagit, its a great little tool.

[Bob O 8]

I use Paint.net. Edited 17 Apr 2008 by Bob O

[paulengr 44]

I open Microsoft Word, then open the screen I want the screen shot from, hit the "print screen" button, then go to the Word page, hit Ctrl-V (paste), and then use the standard markup tools within Word to do it. In general they suck so if I want to do much more than crop and a little bit of marking arrows or circles on something, then I'll switch to GIMP, Pagemaker (if you have this...much better than Word, but pricey), or OpenOffice (at least it's better than Word).

[forqnc 2]

I'll second that

[BobLfoot 301]

Let me add another bump for snagit. Been using it since version 5 now using 8.2 and it is good.

[Guest]

third ... it meets my needs ...

[DanW 41]

MS Paint for cropping photos, graphics, images & erasing the parts I don't want. For resizing photos I use an very old version of Serif's PhotoPlus because one can re-size by ratio. MS Word has a drawing tool bar with circles/ovals, rectangles, and arrows (view > toolbars > drawing) I do a lot in MS Power Point because it's easier to move stuff exactly where I want it, than it is in MS Word. So I frequently create a graphics layout in MS Power Point and then take a screen shot of the power point slide and insert the jpg screen shot into MS Word. Dan

[ianbuckley 0]

Thanks guys! Snag-it seems to do what I was looking for. I got tired of hitting undo when the circle or line wasn't exactly where I was trying to put it using Paint. I used to have an old mark-up tool that came with our first scanner that had a lot of the same tools as Snag-it, but lost track of the disk with the program over the years and resorted to using Paint. Snag-it is much better. Thanks again. Ian

[PdL 71]

Using SnagIt myself as well, its excellent. Using 2 profiles, region capture and window capture. Both assinged hotkeys CTRL+1 or 2, outputs as PNG (small thus portable yet no quality loss), using automatic filename so I only have to click save when done editing and it saves using an automatic filename to a fixed Screencap directory in My Pictures folder. Makes taking screenshots a piece of cake, awesome for easily creating how to guides and manuals.