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Creating SnagIt Stamps in Photoshop

by Geetesh Bajaj, June 2nd, 2006

Stamps are a great feature in TechSmith SnagIt that allows you to annotate and mark certain areas of a screenshot so that you can describe it in detail elsewhere. Check out Indezine's stamp tutorial for SnagIt here...

Several stamps are included with SnagIt and TechSmith also provides more from their website. But some people are never happy with the default offerings--they like to see how they can customize a feature and get it to do more. That's exactly what I was thinking about when I decided to create my own set of stamps for SnagIt. In this tutorial, I'll show how you can create these stamps within Adobe Photoshop. If you are using a different image editor, the concepts will still remain the same.

Before you begin, do remember that stamps in SnagIt are just a series of PNG files with transparency. Open the folder where your copy of SnagIt is installed and you'll find a Stamps folder. Inside the Stamps folder will be several other folders that contain a large collection of individual PNG stamps.

Note: SnagIt allows you to create stamps in formats other than PNG, but PNG does work best.

Here's how you can create SnagIt stamps in Adobe Photoshop:

1. Create a new document in Photoshop. Choose File | New and select the size of the document. Since stamps are typically small, 50 by 50 pixels is a good size to start with--once you experiment, you might want to use other sizes. Remember--let the background content be transparent.
   
   
2. Draw any shape. I drew a circle and applied a style from the Styles palette (see Figure 1).
   
   Note: Make sure that you don't apply a drop shadow in any of the styles within Photoshop since SnagIt has its own drop shadow option.
   
   
   Figure 1: A circle with a style applied
   
   
3. Once this basic shape is created, type the first alphabet--"A" on a different layer and format the text color and size as required (see Figure 2).
   
   
   Figure 2: A circle with alphabet applied
   
   
4. Save this image as a PNG graphic. Choose File | Save for Web--this will bring up the Save for Web dialog box that you can see in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Photoshop's Save for Web dialog box
   
   
5. In the file format drop down menu, select PNG-24 and make sure you place a check in the Transparency box. Click Save to create a new PNG file. This will save the graphic and bring you back to Photoshop.
   
   
6. Activate the text layer in Photoshop, and edit "A" to become "B". Using the same process explained earlier, save it as a PNG. Repeat the same method for all the alphabets.
   
   
7. Place all the these PNG graphics in a folder--if you want to use the same graphics that we created, just download them here...
   
   
8. Open SnagIt, and choose File | Open. Just open any graphic you have, or just click Cancel in the Open dialog box and SnagIt will still open with a default white graphic inside Snagt Editor that you can see in Figure 4.
   
   
   Figure 4: SnagIt Editor
   
   
9. Click the Stamp tool under the Tools section--this will change the Properties panel to shows Stamps properties as shown in Figure 5. Click the Organize Stamps button.
   
   
   Figure 5: Stamp tool properties
   
   
10. This will bring up the Organize Stamps dialog box that you can see in Figure 6. If SnagIt doesn't ask you for a default stamp location, you can set it up by clicking the Stamp Folder button and choosing a folder.
    
    
    Figure 6: Organize your SnagIt Stamps
    
    
11. Click the plus icon on the top left to create a new stamp category as shown in Figure 7.
    
    
    Figure 7: Add Category
    
    
12. Give a name to your new category in the resultant text box, and click OK (see Figure 8).
    
    
    Figure 8: Name your category
    
    
13. Click the plus icon under Stamps to add your stamps that you created in Photoshop earlier (see Figure 9).
    
    
    Figure 9: Add your stamps
    
    In the resultant dialog box, choose all the PNGs and click Open. Click Close to get back to the SnagIt Editor.
    
    
14. At this point, your stamps are part of SnagIt--you can use them like any other stamps that were part of the SnagIt installation (see Figure 10).
    
    
    Figure 10: Your own SnagIt stamps!

To learn how you can use these stamps, look here...

Thanks to Betsy Weber of TechSmith for coordinating with me for this tutorial.

Note: SnagIt itself has basic image editing capabilities--and if you don't have access to Adobe Photoshop or some image editor, you can make great stamps within SnagIt too! That's something I'll cover in a subsequent tutorial.