Often, when you try to explain to someone how to do something on the computer, it is hard to do it with words.  For instance, just saying, “Okay, so you’re in Word right? Now, hover over the symbol in the top left hand corner, and scroll down to the print button. Click that and now…” becomes confusing and a pain. Many times you have to start over and go slowly. It helps to take pictures of what you are doing, so then people know exactly what you are doing. (For those of you who haven’t figured out how to do this yet, you can press the prt sc, or print screen, button on your keyboard, and it will take a picture of whatever is on your desktop.) Now this works well, but there is a tool that uses the same concept, except it is much better quality!

It’s called Jing. With Jing, you can snap pictures of anything on your desktop, and you can select certain areas, so there is no need to do any editing! Your picture even gets a link, making it very easy to share with whomever you’d like! You can share it in IMs, blogs, websites, and more. Plus, the program is free!

They even have another feature that records what you are doing; this feature is perfect for step by step instructions. Once again, this is free! You won’t ever need to use that print screen function and then have to piece together multiple pictures anymore! Everything will be in a simple movie file that can be shared online.

Jing is available for download for Mac OS X or Windows. This is a great tool that makes it easy to put together instructions for any computer project! Try out this free download!