Blogging Tips

It’s a pretty common task for a blogger to need a screen capture to get a picture of a Web page or grab a logo of a web site that they are writing about.  While Windows, Mac and Linux include some basic tools for screen captures, most bloggers will want a screen capture tool with the ability to capture portions of pages and add text or other annotations to the captured images.  What’s amazing is that the improvements in screen capture software are rolling out at an amazing pace.

Just earlier this year Jonathan Bailey wrote about Skitch: The Mac Blogger’s Best Screenshot Tool and 3 Firefox Screen Capture Tools.  While those tools are great, I’m impressed with the features that the web based Aviary is bringing to the table. Aviary just won a Webware 100 award for their photo editing service, but they are certainly not letting the award encourage them to rest on their laurels.  Indeed, less than a month after winning the award they have rolled out an addition which adds even more features to their screen capturing tool.

You can now capture any webpage at all, from any browser, by simply putting Aviary.com/ in front of the URL! So if you want to capture Blogging Tips homepage you just change http://www.bloggingtips.com to Aviary.com/http://bloggingtips.com. Your browser will open a new tab or window with the Aviary web-based image editor ready to go.  With the Aviary editor you can edit it, add simple markup like text and save the image to your desktop or host it online.  The capture worked on every page that I tested it with, using both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and even with pages that were Flash driven.

Using the URL to create the screen capture is just one of three ways to activate Talon screen capture.  If you want additional options like capturing a page at different resolutions or to only capture a portion of the page you can click Screen Capture on Aviary’s home page or just bookmark and go directly to http://aviary.com/launch/talon to start up the screen capture and editing service.  For even faster screen captures, Firefox users can install their Firefox addon which allows you to place a SCREEN CAPTURE option on your toolbar for quick access to the screen capture utility.

The Aviary editor screens are a bit cluttered – it doesn’t have the simple elegance of a Skitch for the Macintosh of Jing for the PC.  Also with all these features, the screen capture is a few seconds slower than other software – but it provides you access to free screen capturing, image editors, color editor, effects editor and more.   If you have not yet invested in a screen capture program, then Aviary is one to test out.