Review of LittleSnapper (as a designer)

By Dave Roach on April 27, 2009 at 6:00 am in Design, Mac, Reviews

Recently I purchased LittleSnapper through Macheist, a super amazing bundle of mac applications (plus the proceeds go to charity). Sorry PC users, this application is for Macs only =( Anyways, LittleSnapper basically takes screenshots of entire webpages…no matter how tall the page is and puts it in a library of screenshots:

LittleSnapper Gallery

This is very handy for many applications. If you have a need to display a screenshot an entire webpage for a portfolio or gallery, LittleSnapper makes this easy. Furthermore, if you are a designer, you can bookmark screenshots of a tutorial and go back to it later, and even make a colleciton of tutorials to view whenever you need them.

Another cool feature about LittleSnapper is that it allows you to snap specific elements within a site. This makes things much more accurate than trying to make a screenshot yourself:

Element screenshot

Screenshots can be taken straight from your browser  and are automatically imported into LittleSnapper, or you can use LittleSnapper’s built in browser, which is especially handy when taking images of specific elements.

What makes LittleSnapper so cool though is what you can do with your screenshots after they have been taken. You can easily annotate your screenshots and upload them to share with others! Check out my website dnroach.com in edit mode:

Annotating

As a designer, LittleSnapper is a handy little tool that I have used daily since I got it. It makes things much easier and streamlined on my part, and it’s a simple application that doesn’t get in the way either. Check out http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/ to read about more features and check it out for yourself.

LittleSnapper is on Twitter!

Simple Guide to Computer Screen Shots

By Tim Priebe on October 2, 2008 at 6:30 am in General, Mac, Windows

Screen captures are extremely helpful in our line of work. We test websites extensively in mutliple browsers and operating systems, but sometimes a problem will still show up on a client’s computer that we don’t see. In those cases, a screen shot is invaluable.

Screen captures are relatively easy in both Windows and Mac’s OS X. Here’s a quick guide to each.

Windows

In Windows, pressing Ctrl and the Print Screen key takes a screen capture and copies it into the clipboard. This means you can then go into your email program and paste it directly into an email for sending to someone, or even open a graphics program, paste it in there, and save the image file.

Windows Vista also includes a utility called Snipping Tool. While I don’t personally have experience with Vista’s Snipping Tool, my understanding is that it is a much more robust tool than the built in options prior to Vista.

Personally, on the rare occasions I need to do a screen capture in Windows, I use a screen capture utility called Cropper. It makes it very easy to capture only the area of the screen you want to, and saves in several different formats.

Mac’s OS X

Unlike most versions of Windows, Mac’s operating system, OS X, comes with a fairly robust screen capture tool. Pressing Command-Shift-3 takes a screen shot of the entire screen. Pressing Command-Shift-4 lets you capture only a specific area. And pressing space after you’ve pressed Command-Shift-4 lets you take a screen shot of a specific window.

The Mac saves the screen shots to the desktop in a lossless PNG format. However, if you also hold down the control button when performing any of the above mentioned screenshots, it will send the screen capture to the desktop instead.

If the Mac’s built-in tool isn’t enough for you, you might consider trying SnapNDrag. It saves in multiple formats, makes it much easier to email the screen shot, and doesn’t make you remember a keyboard combination.

Hopefully this will help if you ever need to show someone else exactly what’s on your screen.