Using Snagit to add source citations to document images

Productivity tools. We all need them, especially when we do tasks repetitively. Some tools make mundane genealogy tasks a little easier, and more fun.

My focus recently has been on tools that can be used by professional genealogists to make repetitive tasks more efficient.

As I prepare for my upcoming test with ICAPGen (click to learn more), I have to practice meeting their reporting standards, which includes source citations on the front of every document image. There is good reason to have a source citation on the front, as I have learned over the years by experience.

I am creating a lot more reports than usual as I prepare for accreditation. Now I need a way to make it quicker and more fun to add citations to the front of images.

You can add text to images with Microsoft Paint or any number of other free image editors. They are often not suited well to this task though. I like to have a way to go back and correct the text if I made a mistake.

I have found two programs which make that easier. Adobe Acrobat (if you want to save your images as pdf files) and Snagit (for everything else).

Check out this screencast that shows how I use Snagit for adding source citations:
Snagit for Genealogists - Intro (click the link) on TechSmith hosting site (requires Flash)
Using Snagit for Citations on Images (same video as above) on YouTube

Adobe Acrobat 
Pros

• Edit citations easily any time you open the PDF (because they open in Acrobat if you have that software)

Cons

• Slow and bulky compared to Snagit
• More expensive

Snagit
Pros

• Snagit is a faster and more streamlined software
• It is easier to save the images you want because you can clip them from anything you can see on your screen.
• Snagit doubles as a good tool to make snippets of portions of documents to insert directly into genealogical reports

Cons

• In Snagit you will have to export the image again after any citation edit you make because the text editing will have to be done in Snagit.  A different copy of the image is saved in Snagit and that is the copy you will edit, and re-export.

Buy Snagit at TechSmith.com They also sell a screen recording software called Camtasia which I have found useful as an online educator.

Disclaimer: A small percentage of each purchase made after using my links to enter the website may be paid to me in an affiliate arrangement. This arrangement does not affect my honest opinion given on the software.

What do you think? Do you have any favorite programs to add source citations to the front of an image? What about other productivity tools that you use as a professional genealogist?