Getting Started
Welcome
Welcome to the LittleSnapper Manual. The first part of the manual is dedicated to helping you quickly start building a library of snaps and capture your design inspiration, whilst in the reference sections you can find a feature-by-feature run down of all LittleSnapper's options.
Conventions Used
Menu Options
These are a series of Menu options to follow in LittleSnapper's menu system. The example below takes you to the File menu, and to the Export Images menu option.
File > Export Images
Keyboard Shortcuts
LittleSnapper has a significant number of Keyboard Shortcuts. The example below shows the shortcut to export the currently selected images using the Command (Cmd) key, the Shift key and the letter E.
Cmd + Shift + E (Export Images)
Installing LittleSnapper
Installing LittleSnapper is quick and easy. Just follow the easy steps below to get snapping!
- Download the littlesnapper.zip file from the Realmac Software
Downloads page found at www.realmacsoftware.com/downloads/
- Once the download has completed, open the ZIP file found in
your Downloads folder.
- Drag LittleSnapper from the Downloads window to your
Applications folder.
- Launch LittleSnapper!
LittleSnapper requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and 40MB disk space. Once you have downloaded and installed the application, you can remove the downloaded littlesnapper.zip file.
Registering LittleSnapper
Whilst we would love you to register LittleSnapper with a shiny new serial number and unlock the demo version you have downloaded, you can run it in demo mode for as long as you like. The only limitation is that your library can contain no more than thirty (30) images at any time.
When LittleSnapper launches for the first time, you will be prompted to do one of three things:
- Purchase LittleSnapper
- Enter a valid serial number
- Run LittleSnapper in Demo mode
After you've made your choice, LittleSnapper will launch and create a new library file with a few pre-built smart collections.
Snap
Global Menu Item
Once you've installed and started LittleSnapper, you'll notice a new menu-bar item in the OS X menu bar. This shows that LittleSnapper is running, and allows you to easily access the snap controls from any application.
To capture your first webpage, launch your preferred web browser. Throughout this manual, we'll be using Safari in our examples, however LittleSnapper works with all the popular Mac OS X web browsers (Safari, Firefox, Camino, OmniWeb, Flock and Opera).
Navigate to a website you want to capture and choose the Snap Web Address from Safari option from the LittleSnapper menu item. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Option + 1.
In the background, LittleSnapper will capture the website and add the snap to your Library complete with the page's web address and title. If you switch back to LittleSnapper from Safari, you'll notice that the snap has been added to your library. LittleSnapper also saves the HTML associated with any websnaps you take so that you can take a look at it later on.
Figure 2: The Global Menu Item
Built-in Browser
We're now going to add another snap to this new library, this time using the web browser built into LittleSnapper. You can switch to the browser using the browser button found below the Icon view, or use keyboard shortcut Cmd + 3. If you're already in Safari, and want to open the currently-viewed page in the LittleSnapper browser, you can simply use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Option + 2 [or the Open Current Website in LittleSnapper menu item option].
Once in the LittleSnapper browser, you can visit any webpage as normal, however there are two extra action bar buttons found to the left of the address field: one for full webpage capture (shortcut Cmd + S), the other for page element selection and snapping (shortcut Cmd + D).
With the page loaded and the elements you want to capture in front of you, click the 'Element Selection' tool. As you roll over the page's images, navigation and text the automatic selection detects the width of the page elements. To select an area of the page, simply click over one of the highlighted areas. A set of resize handles appear around the area, to allow you to refind the selection and once you're happy with the area simply click 'Snap'. LittleSnapper captures only that area, and adds it to your library.
Figure 3: The Built-in Browser & Element
Selection Tool
Import Existing Snaps
If you have a folder of existing snaps on your desktop, you can import them into your library using the File > Import option. Simply point LittleSnapper to the folder, specify whether the snaps are web or screensnaps (you can always change this after import if you wish), and click import to bring them into your library.
You can also drag snaps onto the LittleSnapper dock icon to import images into your library.
For a more detailed look at Snapping refer to the Snapping reference area of the Manual.
Organise
The Inspector
Figure 4: The InspectorWithin the inspector
are all the tools you need to customise the metadata for each snap.
To open the inspector, click the (i) button found in the
bottom-left corner of the window, or use the keyboard shortcut
Cmd + Shift + i.
You can modify almost any metadata relating to a snap: the title (which is used to identify the image, and used when you export a snap), the image's rating, tags you want to associate with a snap, and any notes or descriptions you want to store with the image. You can directly edit all the fields within the inspector apart from the Published table, which notes which sharing services you have uploaded a snap to.
Rating snaps is easy: simply choose a rating from one to five stars, and select it using all the stars shown in the inspector. To apply tags to a snap, enter them into the Tags field making sure you press return between each tag you want to use.
The Tag Manager
Figure 5: The Tag ManagerThe Tag Manager
allows you to easily view, add, remove and search active tags. As
well as providing a way to quickly add single or multiple tags to
snaps. To open the the tag manager, click the tag manager button
found below the Icon view, or use keyboard shortcut Shift +
Cmd + T. Placing single or multiple tags onto snaps is
simply a case of dragging them from the tag manager onto a
snap.
The Sidebar
Figure 6: The SidebarSnaps are grouped in
the sidebar by main Library, Type, Collections and Recent
Searches.
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Library. Your Library contains all your snaps and their associated metadata.
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Unprocessed. These are snaps which have no star rating, have not yet been tagged, have a title of 'untitled' or 'IMG_' (the later being an unnamed iPhone image).
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Type. Your snaps are automatically organised into their respective categories which can in turn be defined in the page inspector.
In order to help you manage your snaps, you can create collections, smart collections and folders in the LittleSnapper sidebar. Clicking the [+] button in the bottom left allows you to add items to the sidebar.
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Collections allow you to create sets of snaps through drag and drop. Control over exactly which snaps are added and removed from a collection is left entirely to the user.
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Smart Collections are much like iTunes' Smart Playlists, and allow you to automatically group snaps based on rules such as their rating, title, original web address or the date a snap was taken. You can also specify rules based on whether a snap was taken Today, whether a tag has been applied to a snap.
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Folders allow you to manage your collected snaps. Folders can contain other (nested) folders, collections and smart collections. There are no limits to the number of folders you can create in the sidebar.
Recent searches are also stored in the sidebar so that you can quickly navigate to snaps by selecting the relevant search group.
For a more detailed look at Organising refer to the Organise reference area of the Manual.
Edit
LittleSnapper comes with a number of editing tools that let you annotate snaps. For further information consult the Edit reference page of the Manual. All of the annotation tools are vector-based, and create non-destructive annotations that leave your original images intact. Just like Icon view, the Edit view has a Publish button to let you share images any of the supported web-services.
If you ever want to hide annotations from an image, you can toggle the display of annotations by using the Layers > Hide Annotations option when in Edit mode.
Tools
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The Highlight tool overlays the snap with a semi-transparent layer which you can then 'cut out' areas to emphasise particularly areas of the snap.
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The Blur tool lets you obscure details [perhaps of a username, password or email address] that have been captured as part of a snap.
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Shapes - Square, Circle, Line & Arrow. You can draw as many shapes over your snap as you want. All shape can be customised in line-width and colour using the colour picker and slider in the actionbar. The fill of shapes can be switched between Outline and Fill by selecting the shape, and using the keyboard shortcut F.
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Text. LittleSnapper comes with a fully featured text tool. In addition to full font-control and colour options, the text tool can also add numbered callouts onto annotations, allowing you to add text in a more spacious location than the snap allows. You can even drag text annotations that are linked to called off the snap [and onto the canvas background] to leave just numbered callouts that you can then refer to in footnotes or emails. However, please be aware that the canvas size itself will not be extended, and any annotations outside of the original snap area will not be included when exporting.
To change between regular text annotations and callouts, simply double-click a text annotation and choose the drop-down menu located in the bottom-left of the text-editing HUD. You can choose any number (up to the total number of text annotations). The number badge is placed near the text annotation it corresponds to, however you can move it to anywhere on the image you choose.
You can insert multi-line text annotations by using a carriage return (Option + Return) in the text-editing HUD window.
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Crop. LittleSnapper also allows you to non-destructively crop images. A semi-transparent layer is placed over the image, and you can specify the crop area by dragging the cursor over the desired area or by adjusting the pixel width and height in the Crop Image HUD. Selecting the Arrow tool will non-destructively crop the image in Edit mode and also display the crop in Preview mode. To re-edit the crop simply select the Crop tool in Edit mode.
Figure 7: The Actionbar
Publish & Export
LittleSnapper includes support for a number of webservices, as well as the ability to export to folders on your Mac. For a more in-depth look at Publish and Export please refer to the Manual's Sharing reference page.
To get started with Publishing, open the LittleSnapper > Preferences window, and choose the Publishing tab. There are two options: sign-up for an Ember account (or log in to an existing one) or add another type of account such as FTP, SFTP or Flickr.
Once you have added a publishing account it appears on the dropdown Publishing menu which is found in the actionbar when in Icon and Edit views.
Ember
Ember is an image hosting service from Realmac Software designed to work seamlessly with LittleSnapper. To sign up for a free Ember account click the Create Ember Account button. Simply enter your desired username and password, fill in your email address, and give the account a name that LittleSnapper should use in the publishing menu to identify the account.
Click Create Account, and LittleSnapper will register your for the service (provided your username is not already taken) and set it up for your use throughout the application.
If you already have an Ember account, choose the [+] button in the bottom-left corner of the Preferences window, and select Ember from the drop-down list. You will then be prompted to enter your username and password. Once logged in, you will be presented with a window that allows you to view your account details, visit your online profile, and change your avatar for the service using a built-in iSight camera.
Figure 8: Ember Publishing Preferences
Flickr
If you already have a Yahoo Flickr account, simply press the [+] button found in the bottom-left corner of the and choose 'Flickr' from the drop-down list. After entering your username into the sheet that appears, LittleSnapper will open the Flickr website your default browser so that you can authorise LittleSnapper to upload to your account. Once you have completed the authorisation process on the Flickr website, you will be automatically re-directed to LittleSnapper and the application will finish the setup process.
Once a Flickr account has been added to your list of services, you can choose a Photoset and Group that LittleSnapper should use when uploading to Flickr, as well as a other privacy and content type settings which can be configured within each Sharing account's preferences.
LittleSnapper automatically applies the title, tags, rating and description you have added in the Inspector to snaps uploaded to Flickr.
Figure 9: Flickr Publishing Preferences
FTP and SFTP
LittleSnapper can upload to both FTP and SFTP servers. To add a server, simply choose FTP or SFTP from the accounts dropdown menu in the LittleSnapper preferences window. When entering your server details, be sure to check that the Path, Port and Web Address are correct.
The Path is the location that LittleSnapper should upload snaps to. The exact path varies from host to host, however the path should be the location within your webspace for whichever folder you choose in the Web Address field to store your images.
The Web Address is the publicly-accessible location of the folder that LittleSnapper is uploading to, and is used to generate the web address of any images you upload. It must always begin http:// in order for LittleSnapper to generate accurate locations and HTML code to point to your images.
Figure 10: FTP Publishing Preferences
Export
If you need to export images to a location on your Mac, you can do so using the File > Export Images and File > Export Website to PDF options (or the keyboard shortcuts Cmd + Shift + E and Cmd + Option + Shift + E respectively).
Export Images allows you to export any snap in either PNG or JPEG format, with or without annotations. You can also export images in LittleSnapper's own '.snap' snap-bundle format. The benefit of this being that it will include all your snaps metadata and annotations in a non-destructive form. When exporting, LittleSnapper uses the names specified in the Inspector to name the files.
Export Website to PDF lets you export websnaps to PDF format. The 'Use Pagination' option allows you to export the PDF as a multi-page PDF, or simply export the selected websnap to a single-page, text-selectable PDF.
Drag and Drop
If you need to quickly export a snap, you can simply drag and drop the relevant snap out of LittleSnapper into the Finder, Mail.app or any other Mac OS X application. By default, LittleSnapper will apply annotations to any snaps you drag out of the application however this can be configured in the LittleSnapper preferences.
Working with External Editors
LittleSnapper allows you to send snaps (and the HTML that accompanies Websnaps) to external image and HTML editors. Once you've set up your preferred editors in LittleSnapper's Preferences > General tab, simply right-click on an image, and choose the 'View Image in' or 'View Source in' option from the contextual menu or the Images menu.
What's Next?
Take a look at the LittleSnapper Manual reference sections for more on Littlesnappers powerful features: