You can then add text, shapes, callouts, magnified sections, crop, and rotate. This includes the ability to take screenshots (and recordings) of areas, or individual windows. Traditionally macOS had the best option here, with the in-built screenshot shortcuts, settings, QuickTime, and Preview application providing a fairly solid suite of tools for free. These are the types of tools you are likely most familiar with and use a graphical interface to help you take and manage images. Thankfully there are a multitude of tools and approaches to help you overcome these challenges and in this post I summarise some (there are lots of quite similar tools) of the options available to you, and how they help you with the following:Īny other useful features for documentariansįor each example, I include a small summary, costs, operating system (OS) support, and any standout features. Not all readers of documentation see images, and it’s essential to provide alternative text to describe them, which is another task to remember to undertake and keep up to date and relevant. One other aspect to consider is accessibility and automated services.
Many people now use high resolution or large screens, and small low resolution images generally appear pixelated and unclear if you capture them on a small or lower resolution screen. The same applies for taking clear screenshots. It’s relatively easy to take a screenshot, but taking a screenshot that actually supports and supplements text is an art in itself. This is time consuming, hard to manage and to remember.Īnother challenge is capturing a helpful and useful image. The biggest challenge with screenshots is keeping them up to date and thus relevant to readers. Images help break up page structure and draw a readers eyes to text as they scroll through a page and the images draw their attention. Well considered images in documentation can help illustrate a concept, clarify a complex idea, or show a reader what they can expect from undertaking certain steps. I won’t repeat any famous phrases about how pictures equalling a quantity of words, I think we all understand the potential power of a good visual. Tools to help generate screenshots for your documentation
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