I always look forward to this time of year—snow, candlelight carols, gifts, food, family. Whether you look ahead to the holidays with joy or dread, we want to offer you something to anticipate in the New Year!

We're super excited to be attending and sponsoring the first ever VizThink conference, January 27-29, in San Francisco.

The conference is going to bring together people with a zillion different job titles who have one thing in common— an interest in using images to communicate and teach. Since you may be one of those visual thinkers, I want to invite you to attend the conference and extend a special discount.

Get $100 off the registration fee by using discount code PCT02. Click here for pricing and registration; enter the code on the third screen during registration.

This is going to be a fascinating conference that explores things like back-of-the-napkin thinking, mind mapping, creative problem solving, PowerPoint beyond bullets, storytelling through comics, and more.

Details:

• Introductory blog post
• Facilitators & sessions wiki page
• Conference homepage

Hope we'll see you there!
Daniel Foster

Do you use TechSmith's Camtasia Studio to create screen videos? Wish it were easier to shoot an image from SnagIt to Camtasia Studio?

Now it is, thanks to a new (free) accessory for SnagIt!

The accessory adds a button to the toolbar inside SnagIt's Capture Preview window. Click the button and your image is sent directly to Camtasia Studio's clip bin.

This will save you time when working between the two applications. So go nuts...doll up your videos with attention-grabbing still images—whether fancy title slides, a chart, or perhaps a photo of yourself!

(To learn more about SnagIt accessories and the output toolbar, check out this video...)

Michelle Madhok is a style columnist for MSN Shopping and the American Heart Association. She also founded SheFinds.com and MomFinds.com, sites that help women find great deals online.

With all the work she does in the digital medium, Michelle says SnagIt is indispensable for gathering, editing, and posting product images in her newsletters and blogs. You can't just talk about the shiny, happy patent leather biker jacket, after all...you've got to show it!

Michelle also uses SnagIt to communicate with her editorial and development teams.

"It's really my favorite software app and everyone I give it to becomes an addict," she said.

Read our brief interview to learn how Michelle uses SnagIt in her work as an online shopping maven...and get some hot gift ideas!

A big thanks to each of you who voted last month for which stamps we should create next!

Voter turnout was huge, and pretty evenly divided. As you can see, flowchart icons and navigation buttons were at the top of the heap, with 796 and 700 votes, respectively.

(Click the image for a larger view of the chart; "other" represents stamps receiving fewer than 200 votes apiece.)

We'll do our best to bring you the top-ranked stamps over the coming months. Thanks again for participating!

Sometimes you want to edit your captured images...but sometimes you don't.

When you're looking to streamline the capture process and don't need to edit, just turn off the Preview Window.

In this video I show how to skip the preview and send captures directly to another program or a file.

If you're a help file developer, the Microsoft Word Add-in has been specifically designed to make your job easier. You can automatically insert your captures as a link into Word – a method most help compiler applications require. When using the add-in, you initiate the capture from within Word allowing you to fit the capture > edit > insert file as link workflow process into your existing writing routine. Here's how:

  1. Within Word, place the cursor where the image will go. Apply the appropriate style for the image.

  2. Click the Setup button on the SnagIt Add-in toolbar.

  3. Enable the File option.

  4. Check the Enable the Preview Window option.

  5. Uncheck the Copy into Document option.

  6. Check the Link to File option.

  7. Click OK.

  8. From the SnagIt Add-In toolbar, choose the desired type of capture.

  9. Click the SnagIt Capture button.

 10. When capture is complete, it appears in the Preview Window. Make any edits or annotations.

 11. Click Finish. You are prompted to save the capture as a file. (Save to your help project's image folder.)

 12. The capture is inserted into the Word document as a link.

Note: Once the Word add-in in configured for this process, you do not need to repeat steps 2-7 for every capture you take.