The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

AJ Morris works in TechSmith’s Tech Support department and often uses Jing when helping customers. One day he was showing me some examples of the Jings he’s made and we came across this one.

“How did you get so many images in one capture?” I asked. “How did you capture the mouse cursor?”

“Huh?” AJ replied. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll just show you.”

AJ showed me indeed, and core to this example is the use of the Hotkey. It lets you keep the mouse in focus while still launching Jing. Now, I will attempt to show you. Some of you may already be using Jing this way, but it was new to me! I especially like how this strategy could be used for times when you need to print out a quick guide or short reference.

How AJ set the stage. (0:35, audio required)
Capturing and annotating the image. (0:55, audio required) Since I couldn’t easily use Jing to record a Jing annotation, I used Camtasia Studio 5 for the second part of this workflow example.

Written Steps:
Step 1: Clear off your [computer] desktop. If this is hopeless, open a word processor and view a blank document in full screen mode to create a clean background.

Step 2: Open the software you are attempting to explain.

Step 3: Click the necessary tabs, pull-down menus and pop up windows. Arrange the windows side-by-side in a sequential manner.

Step 4: Launch Jing and capture the image using the Hotkey. Annotate as necessary.

Step 5: Share!