Sometimes when you’re working with a buyer or seller it might necessary to take screenshots of images or articles that you may run across on the net which are not easily shared through other means. Screencaptures can also be used in situations with other service providers including home inspectors, web providers, and other partners.
A more common need for screenshots is when you’re writing a blog post and need to capture the screen to help add imagery to your post.
There are lots of screen capture offerings in the market including some paid and some that are free. Here is a review of a select few options that we recommend.
SnagIt by Techsmith (Desktop Application)
SnagIt is a feature packed screen capture tool that has multiple formats and options including:
- Screenshot of a specific region of a website
- Screenshot of a window
- Full screenshot
- Scrolling windows (or web pages)
- Menu with time delay
- Text from a window
- Images from web pages
SnagIt also has a built in screen recorder as well which allows you to record your screen with others. The most powerful SnagIt feature is its versatile editor which allows annotations, markups, cropping, resizing and much more without launching Photoshop or other editing tools.
Lightshot
Lightshot is another great screencapture tool. One of the best features of Lightshot is the ability to instantly share your screencapture with others on Twitter, Facebook, via email by using its built in URL shortener. The online sharing capability makes this tool one of the best real time collaboration tools available. If you are working with a buyer or seller over the net and want to quickly show a listing or information about a particular subject , within a few clicks you can instantly share your screenshot with them. The advantage is you don’t have to save the screenshot to your local computer then upload it anywhere else. This saves a few clicks and is more portable than traditional screen capture tools.
Screenshot by Diigo (a Chrome Extension)
Similar to Lightshot is Diigo , a screen capture tool that allows instant sharing. Diigo however allows you to annotate and mark up a page before capturing it and it has the ability to capture a scrolling window just like SnagIt (have not found this feature on Lightshot yet). Collaboration seems to be a big part of their offering which we have not had a chance to explore yet but there may be some interesting uses in real estate with the collaborative features.
There are lots more screenshot tools out there that of course we have not had a chance to use yet, but these should be sufficient to get started adding images to blog posts. Just a side note, while writing this, I used Diigo to take a screenshot of SnagIt and SnagIt to take a snapshot of Lightshot and Diigo. Looks like they all work equally well for blog posting.