Having recently been introduced to Digeus' "Snap It" screen capture tool, I've found it to be a very useful tool. It is ideal for photographers blogging or posting tips about editing, photoshop captures, for marketers or basically any type of blogger. It is also useful for personal use such as emailing.
Now you may already be familiar with some form of screen capture tool, or even some keyboard shortcuts, but you will find that some of these may be "handy" to you simply because they are the only ones you have used.
Perhaps you get the screen capture you want with these other tools but it takes too long.
Or perhaps it is quick enough but you have no control of which area of the screen you capture and end up wasting time cropping unwanted parts or borders (as in the picture below with a red border of the selection)
Snap It is a very convenient tool for bloggers. When you write posts on your blog and you need to capture and crop images from different sources - this tool is for you.
Snap It Features:
- It supports hotkeys, auto-saving, clipboard
- Automatically copies screenshots to the clipboard
- Tracks capture history and auto-saves captured images
- Saves files in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats
- Auto-names captured images
For those using windows' "Snipping Tool", you will find Snap It 3.7 to be perfect for you, saving you time and effort. It may not be as elaborate and as complete as Adobe Captivate 
is, but it certainly makes blogging and such tasks less complex.
Discover Snap It and Download Here
Are you a photographer? And do you blog?
Here we will discuss why it may be in your interest as a photographer to regularly blog your work or something about what you do. But should ALL photographers blog?
Networking.
As most of you know, especially if you ARE reading this post, the internet is today's knowledge bank, and the majority of us when seeking any sort of resources simply type it into our search engines. In addition to that, we now spend a lot more time on the internet than we did years ago due to the social elements and networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, BeBo and Myspace (to name a few).
So, how does this benefit you as a photographer? Your work can now attract a huge number of people to your work with minimal effort and in very little time. How is this useful to you? Simple, this can help generate more work for you, it can attract feedback from fellow photographers and even requests for advice from others.
But why a blog?
Now, how about having a blog, your own domain (or address) where you regularly do this sharing and of course link it back to your social networking profiles. This adds to your web-presence and as a professional, amateur, beginner, educator or simply a fanatic, this is worth your consideration.
Our photography site www.iDrawWithLight.com has seen almost 8 times more visitors than it did when all there was was word of mouth and occasional link sharing. Of course the work load increases, but isn't this what you want as a photographer?
If you are a photographer, be it beginner, amateur or more experience, you would have heard of photo-sharing websites and places that are key to have your portfolio.
As a photographer, the key to getting work or recognition is simple - people have to see your stuff. For this, you don't have to invest millions of pounds (or dollars, or euros...) in a huge billboard in the centre of the busiest town of where you stay to have one of our images viewed. You can simply share them online and have them viewable on the web to any and everyone.
"Oh I know, I need a website or blog." Wrong! As much as these two are great and a good reference point for people to see your stuff, they are not an obligation. Plus, they can cost quite a bit for someone who is not getting much work yet or simply starting out.
Flickr has so far been photographers' favourite photo-sharing website. It bears a worldwide community of photographers and photography enthusiasts, sharing and commenting on each other's images. You can also join groups and hold discussions, share tips, learn a few things and even go on photo-walks with fellow photographers.
Socialtimes.com listed the Top 5 Photo-sharing sites but I'm only going to mention 4 and add a 5th of my own. I recommend at least one to all photographers. For those that already have websites and blogs, it enhances your web presence as well as the quantity of your work available for the public to see so do not overlook these.
No.1 = Flickr. Surprise surprise! Everyone knows Flickr and thus everyone's on it. "Flickr, with 36 million members and a staggering 3.5 billion photos, is an immense social network. It’s full of friendship data. People comment, join groups, declare friends, click on favorite photos, and limit viewing to certain friends and family."Source (http://www.businessweek.com/)
No.2 = Zooomr. Zooomr is sort of like Flickr but it is also great to use on its own. A major plus for this one is that it has no download limit for free users. So, if you thought you needed a blog or site or multiple paid accounts - Zooomr is at your rescue!
No.3 = Picasa Web Albums. I personally don't use this much. Though, if you have a lot of mobile devices, you may find that it's always in the top 5 or 10 of applications related to photography for you to download. Also, if you're a windows and HP user, you'll find that it's somehow already installed on your computer or comes alongside a software update for your HP printer. Does this make it recommendable? Not particularly, but it definitely makes it popular with search engines etc. It's by the almighty Google itself! Picasa is also great as it helps in organising your images into albums and sub folders somewhat smoother than a few other such sites.
No. 4 = Photobucket . Photobucket is cool and not very sophisticated. Personally, I find the layout a little too simple but it's great with google and other internet sources. The limit is generous and you can easily have a photobucket account alongside any other photo-sharing account.
No. 5 = ModelMayhem Now, as much as I know MM is not your typical photo-sharing site, it's a great place to build a profile and upload a brief portfolio. The best thing about it is that it links you to models, makeup artists, stylists and basically people with whom you can do trade or commercial work. You can also view other photographers' portfolios for inspiration. Here's a previous post I wrote about ModelMayhem http://idrawwithlight.blogspot.com/2010/05/model-mayhem.html
