Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

With computers and the Internet, a picture might be worth a lot more than 1,000 words.

If you’re trying to teach someone how to use an application, one of the most useful things you can do is snap a picture of it to show them. If you’re trying to talk to support about something bizarre that’s happening, having evidence of what you’re talking about can save you from the “oh, well, it worked this time” moment that always comes up when the repair man is watching.

For a long time, I’ve used Evernote for taking screenshots, and ScreenCastle for taking screencasts (longer videos of what’s happening on my screen). They both work well, and I recommend them left and right. I, however, will no longer be using either one for those purposes: I’ll be using Jing from now on.

Jing is a free download for Windows and Mac, and is a high-powered screen capture tool. Once downloaded and installed, it lives in the background, waiting to be invoked. Click the little sun icon, and the fun really gets going.

Once you open the Jing window,  you get a number of different options. The easiest thing to do is take a simple screenshot, of a single window or a whole desktop. You pick the size of the window that gets clipped, and then you see a preview of what you’ve just taken a screenshot of.

Then, you can mark it up to your heart’s content: add a text box, an arrow, highlights, or a frame to any spot or window in order to make the image even better and more useful. It’s easy to add captions and the like, and mark up your images in any way you’d like.

If you’re capturing a video, you’ve got a new set of options. You’ll pick an area or window on the screen, and Jing will record everything you do within that space (and only in that space). Whatever your mouse does, wherever you click, Jing keeps a running video of it. You can even narrate your video as you’re going (up to 5 minutes).

Once your screenshot or screencast is ready, the sharing options get to shine; they’re probably my favorite part of Jing. Jing owns its own site for screencasts, and you can easily upload to there and then share the screencast link. You can email files with one click, or upload screenshots to Flickr, and then share them on Twitter – the link is even automatically put on your clipboard! Just hit “paste” wherever you want, and your screenshot becomes available.

You can also embed images or screencasts, or just save them to your computer and share them in some other way. Jing offers a ton of features, all which are simple to use and simple to ignore.

There’s also a Pro version of Jing that offers a number of other features for just $15/year. I haven’t upgraded yet, but I’m thinking about it – it offers the ability to save screencasts to MP4 format, which is playable just about anywhere, as well as automatically upload to YouTube and have smaller files. Some great features, but no need for most to upgrade.

Jing is a little RAM-heavy, but not so huge that it had to go. It’s the fastest, simplest, and most robust way to take screenshots and screencasts that I’ve ever seen, and if you start seeing more images like the one above around here, you’ll know why.

What do you use for screenshots, screencasts, and pictures of your computer?

Photo: Auntie P