Having Fun with Snagit
June 3rd, 2009 | Posted in blog 16 Comments »
This week I needed to create some visuals for a PowerPoint to illustrate concepts related to blogging. Since I have limited artistic ability (perhaps even negative artistic ability), I resorted to a stick figure person as a common theme. I spent a while trying to decide which tool to use to draw with. It turns out drawing a basic circle in Photoshop that doesn’t have a solid fill is tedious, as are other drawing functions in Photoshop. So I used my favorite little graphics program instead: Snagit.
Snagit 9 introduces a .snag format that saves every object on the screen as a movable part. Of course it’s not as powerful as Photoshop or Illustrator, but it’s a lot quicker and easier. I especially like the Add to Quick Styles feature, so that after defining a shape (for example a line of a certain color, width, and shadow) I can save it to the toolbar and access it immediately.
I also enjoy Snagit’s general ease of use. It’s the one graphics program that Jane found essential for working with images on her blog. I tweeted the other day that I wished more products would have Techsmith’s same usability, and they consequently gave me several product licenses to give away. So look for an upcoming caption contest on my blog shortly.
Here are my little stick figure drawings. You can click the images to see the full sizes.
Visibility
Purpose
The Question
Relevance
Readability
Voice
Story
Revealing Appropriately
Interaction
Regularity
Sponsors
Tags: drawing, PowerPoint, SnagIt, stick figures, Technical Writing, TechSmith, usability, visuals
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Your illustrations meet the goals you made for them: The clearly convey the ideas you wanted to illustrate, rather charmingly, too. I didn’t think stick figures could have personality, but I think these guys do. Now I’ll have to go play with the tools in Snagit!
Margaret, thanks for the comment. Glad to hear you found them a bit charming even in their simplicity.
I think the results clearly show that you have more artisitic ability than you think you do. Like Margaret said above, you’ve given these figures personality, which is a tricky thing to do with stick figures Even without knowing the full content of the powerpoint, I can understand the ideas you are planning to express.
After reading Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin, I’m convinced that even with minimal artistic ability, if I can brainstorm my point in an illustrative way, it will get the job done. A poor picture is often better than no picture.
Your stick figure illustrations totally kill me. I love them. They make your point. They also make me laugh.
I also love Snagit, by the way. It RULES. It is fantastic for grabbing slides on the fly during online presentations. It is also unsurpasses for plain old screen captures.
I completely agree with you, Craig. I use Snagit for my screen captures too. At least most of them. When I need to heavily modify the text on the screen, then I may turn to a different tool. But Snagit is a must in my graphics toolbelt.
Tom, what tool do you use when you need to heavily modify the text?
Craig, I use Photoshop if I need to make extensive modifications, but Snagit does allow me to make quick modifications too. Sometimes getting the text to look exactly as it does in the screenshot requires a more powerful tool.
I’ve found that SnagIt, along with Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net) does 99% of what Adobe PhotoShop does. Let’s face it, I’m not a digital artist, but rather someone that applies minor edits to real-life objects. For that, I’ll take SnagIt + Paint.net any day.
Do we get to read the finished presentation? I’d like to see that.
Sure, in fact I already modified the images somewhat. I took some backgrounds from Visio and added them in. They looked bare to me without them. Maybe I’ll reupload them now.
Ditto.
I usually post a recording of the presentation and its accompanying powerpoint, so look for that sometime next week.
Your illustrations meet the goals you made for them: The clearly convey the ideas you wanted to illustrate, rather charmingly, too. I didn’t think stick figures could have personality, but I think these guys do. Now I’ll have to go play with the tools in Snagit!
I like the consistency you drawings present. It is much more appealing to an audience to have one set of figures, colors schemes, labels, etc. and stick to them throughout the slides rather than stick random clip arts…just because they are available. You underestimate your drawing abilities.
I love the images. Seems like snagit is more powerful than I once thought; i might have to give it a revisit.
The stick figures seem to have developed a bit of credibility throughout the image set and this is perfect for an upcoming project I mhave planned. Thanks for the heads up.