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How I Do My Flawless Screen Captures
By Mike Mindel | August 10, 2007
I’ve been asked how I get these posts out so quickly and also how I get my flawless screen captures.
Actually. It’s really easy and I’m going to show you how.
The Tools I Use
You don’t have to have a Wordpress blog. It’s just what I use. ScribeFire interfaces with quite a few blogs: WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal amongst others.
Here’s What I Do
I’ve got my ScribeFire button at the bottom of my FireFox web browser
I click on it and up pops a blank writing window
I enter my details so ScribeFire knows which blog to submit posts to. I won’t go into detail here. But it’s pretty straight forward.
I add my title and start typing my post.
As I listen to Ed waffling on - I mean as I bask in the accumulated wisdom of the years…
;-)
and Ed mentions or shows a resource, I pause the video. Then I load up the resource in another browser and follow along.
When I see an action I hit the print screen key on my keyboard. This starts up SnagIt from TechSmith.
SnagIt is a fantastic utility for doing screen captures.
I’ll assume you have it all installed under your free 30 day 
trial.
Up comes a little crosshair and I can select part of the screen.
Now I can’t actually press print screen right now and capture those cross hairs as an image. So you’ll just have to imagine it.
I snap an image and immediately SnagIt pops up a capture window
Here I can add arrows, change the borders of the image to clean it up. It’s like a basic photo editing tool for screen captures.
Anyhow. Once done it’s time to send the image to Flickr.
I’ll assume you’ve already or will sign up for a free flickr account.
You’ll also need to pop over to SnagIt accessories and click on the Flickr Output
Once installed you’ll see this button in SnagIt
That’s Flickr that is.
Send To Flickr
So now I hit the button and up pops a dialog which I can’t show you as SnagIt won’t allow me to capture it. Duh.
Anyhow. It basically asks me for a Title.
One important thing. I set the ‘Copy to Clipboard’ drop down to ‘Image Url’. This basically means that once the image is sent to Flickr the url of the image in Flickr is in my clipboard.
Then I just paste it into ScribeFire by hitting the Image button
up comes the paste url box
click ok and in it goes into ScribeFire as an image link
What If The Image Is Too Big?
Sometimes a screenshot is too big. In which case I go direct to flickr
click on the image I need to resize
Click on ‘All Sizes’
Select one of Square, Thumbnail, Small, Medium, Original
but usually Medium
Grab the photo’s Url
and then paste into ScribeFire the same way as before.
One Last Point
I tend to work in < a > mode
so I can see the source code as I type.
You don’t have to do this and can use the A mode
and then your text looks like HTML which may be easier for you.
How Long Did This Post Take?
It took me 10 minutes. I kid you not.
Hope that helps!
-Mike
P.S. I spent all of today trying to debug a 45 line sql query. So it was actually a pleasure to hear Ed’s podcast at a leisurely pace.
Technorati Tags: flawless screen captures, mike mindel, snagit, scribe fire, wordpress blog, mozzila firefox, flickr plugin, flickr, capture, send top flickr, techsmith, scribefire image upload, image too big, mentalism tricks, all sizes
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August 10th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Awesome information Mike. Thanks so much. I appreciate your time.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:23 am
Wow, Mike! More excellent tools and techniques.
Any comments on how Snagit differs from Jing! ?
August 10th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Hey Mike,
I have version 8.1.0 and can’t get the flickr output to install. I click it and snagit loads, but it’s not listed as an output.
Do you have any idea what’s going on with it?
~Shannon
August 10th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Jing is like SnagIt. You still have to download Jing and install it. Since Jing is in beta it’s picture editing tools aren’t quite as good.
Also the images upload to ScreenCast.com which only has a 1GB bandwidth. When it runs out you pay. This I tried to do but they won’t take my money. So Jing is out for me.
Flickr is free for the most part. When you want to upgrade to pro (more sets, more photos) then it’s $24.95 a year. I don’t think there’s any bandwidth limit either. Which is great.
August 11th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Hi Mike,
Thanks for very useful and interesting post.
All day for 45 line sql query looks a bit too much (about 10 min per line for 8 hours day.) Was every line 1000 chars long?
Cheers,
Mike
August 11th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
You can’t quantify each line separately. When you’ve got a problem to solve you need to build your tests up one by one from the most simple case to the more complex.
Then you modify the sql to give you what you want and pass the tests.
What takes the time is figuring out how to make the sql adapt to your increasing demands. Gradually it becomes longer and longer, more and more complex.
August 18th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Thanks, Mike to you and the 30DC Team. You all get top marks from me! The videos and supporting visuals cut months off the learning curve!
August 21st, 2007 at 5:04 am
[…] If you’re blogging (or even considering it) you should read this post on screen captures. […]
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:27 am
Mike,
scribefire went into a split screen that i could not close. I had to reboot and it was gone, any tips?
there was no close button.
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 am
With ScribeFire, the button that opens it is also the button that closes it.
-Mike
August 31st, 2007 at 5:40 pm
[…] How I Do My Flawless Screen Captures […]
September 7th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Mike,
How do you add a self hosted wordpress blog to scribefire? I have tried but it keeps telling me that my username and password are invalid. I don’t believe this is the problem. I think that I don’t understand which url to type in, but I could be wrong. Can you help?
Thanks,
Fred
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Excellent tips Mike! Thanks!
November 16th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
[…] Okay, back to ScribeFire. I first heard Mike Mendel mention that he used it when he was doing the transcripts of the Thirty Day Challenge. Curious, I downloaded it (it’s a free program) and I’ve been using it ever since. It sits on your taskbar (the bar at the bottom of your browser) and pops up a resizable screen that acts like you’ve enlarged the taskbar (so it doesn’t actually cover any of the webpage you’re looking at, it just gives you a smaller viewing area). Since it’s attached to the browser, you can go to any webpage and still have what you’re writing sitting right there in front of you. Great when you’re researching information! Plus, you can drag and drop pictures in. […]
February 4th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
[…] You can use the Snagit software for a 30-day trial period before you have to buy it. There are other screen capture software programs out there ( do a Google search for “free screen capture”) but I fell in love with Snagit so I bought it. Flickr is a photo-sharing social-bookmarking site so it has the advantages of being Web 2.0. With the Snagit Flickr plugin installed I can send my screen captures immediately to Flickr and Snagit places the URL in my PC clipboard so I can paste it directly into the image dialogue box. I learnt how to do this from Mike Mindel of WordTracker fame. Here’s the link to his post “How I do my flawless screen-captures” […]
February 4th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
[…] I learnt how to do this from Mike Mindel of WordTracker fame. Here’s the link to his post “How I do my flawless screen-captures” […]