Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Macintosh, Apple, Freeware
Todd's Favorite Mac Apps: Skitch
by Todd Ritter Oct 8th 2008
As a blogger and IT professional I often need to make screenshots for things like showing a program window, instructing where to find an obscure setting, or making a witty LOLcat. Thankfully, Skitch is available to fill this need and make my screenshot tasks quick and painless.I didn't know about Skitch until it was released in public beta early this year. I downloaded the Mac-only client, installed it, and got myself a skitch.com account for easy uploading of my screenshots. Within seconds I was able to capture the entire screen (or a selection) and mark it up with arrows, text, boxes, and circles.
The key feature for me though is the ease with which I'm able to upload the screenshots and share them with others. Using the Skitch web account, I'm able to store my screenshots (for free) and get links to the direct picture file, forum/embed HTML, and a dedicated page that allows commenting on the screenshot. The screenshots can also be uploaded to a WebDAV server, Flickr, or FTP.
For Download Squad posts, I use Skitch to take a screenshot of whatever I'm writing about, and then I just use the "Drag Me" feature to get the screenshot in .jpg format for upload to our blogging platform. I can also simply drag the corner of the Skitch window to resize the screenshot proportionally so that it will fit nicely in the Download Squad layout. Any screenshots I save or upload are archived to my Skitch History in case I need to use them another time.
While Skitch is currently Mac only, the developers have mentioned porting it to Windows.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jash Sayani said 1:48PM on 10-08-2008
Its just great for Software developers for online documentation !!
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zztop said 2:18PM on 10-08-2008
How would you compare this to GrabUp? I just signed up and installed Skitch and it seems very involved.
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Todd Ritter said 2:28PM on 10-08-2008
Skitch allows for pretty cool editing before you decide to share the screenshot (or save it as .jpg). For instance, you can draw arrows, add text, or put a box around a part of your screenshot before uploading it so that you can add more meaning to your shots. I like to resize my screenshots for use on DLS.
Skitch also keeps a history of all your shots on your computer in case you need to reuse them.
Todd
Stephen.4 said 3:16PM on 10-08-2008
You can use Jing for Windows. Works great, although saves and uploads videos as .swf. Not sure if Skitch does that, but other than that it's the exact same.
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