Annotating Images

Since my adoption of MindManager I have been able to create some very nice notes. I can visually organize facts, create hyperlinks to web pages and make relationships and connections to assist in my learning. However there are still some features in OneNote that I really do miss. One of these features is the ability to directly mark up and annotate figures. Since I worked with E-Textbooks this semester many of the figures and images were easy to extract and insert into my notes. It is easy to insert an image in both OneNote and MindManager but where OneNote wins this battle is in its ability to interact and directly write on those inserted images. So I am partial to MindManager but still want to annotate and insert pictures! What’s a guy to do?

This is of course is not just a limitation of MindManger but is just one of those barriers in the Tablet PC OS. Currently adding text and inking images is not as seamless as it should be. I have seen effort from Microsoft to improve the interactions of users with pictures and a Tablet PC. Microsoft Max has intrigued me from the beginning and I still would like to evaluate it sometime soon. (I’ve learned by now not to play with beta software on your tablet if it contains all your class notes and files) Hopefully in the next upcoming version of Vista these hurdles will be overcome. But Vista is due out who knows when and you have a Tablet PC now and want to mark them up! Again what to do?

To solve this problem I have come up with many solutions and I am sure you have many of your own but I’ll share just a few for now.

Your first option is to open up the image on your screen, take a screen clipping and then annotate it with you favorite screen capture tool. If you have a Tablet PC and the Microsoft Experience Pack then the clipping tool is very nice and lets your annotate it very quickly. SnagIt is another option. It is a much more sophisticated screen capture tool but it seems to lack in the inking department. It’s superb for working heavily with screen clippings but what may be to complex for someone that wishes to simply circle or mark something very quickly. Personally there are times I would like to just draw a funny face on a friend and email it to them!


You could use a program like Autodesk SketchBook (formerly known as Alisa Sketchbook) to accomplish any of these feats. The program allows you too add an image and draw just about anything you can think of all over it. With paintbrush, pencil and pen settings it’s aimed towards more professional projects but could be used for simple annotation. However the overkill button once again goes off the search for something a bit simpler continues.



P’Ink is another program that interests me. I don’t know all too much about it but it seems to be specially designed to handle and annotate digital pictures. It’s on that list of programs to look at and you may find it interesting. It probably is a suitable choice but I just don’t know enough about it to use it.

My latest solution is free in that it uses the Snipping Tool from the Microsoft Experience Pack but bypasses the actual snipping part! If you use the Snipping Tool you’ll know that after you have made you selection/clipping and added your annotations you arrive at the send to button. At this point you have some options. You can email it, copy it to the clipboard, save it or edit it. Previously when I used the snipping tool in conjunction with MindManger I would just copy it and then paste it into my MindManager map. If I wanted to keep the annotations so that I could use the image with the annotations later I would save it, then insert or hyperlink to it in MindManager.

I really disliked the process of opening the picture, taking a screen clipping, making my annotations and then finally being able to insert it. What if I could just skip the whole clipping part and go right to the annotating? Remember the editor window button? If you recall, hitting this button will bring your clipping to an editor. From here you can highlight, erase, lasso move annotations, or add additional ones! It’s a simple and easy way to add ink annotations.

I really liked this editor and started wondering if you could open images and edit them from within the editor itself. It turns out you can! Just go file, open and you can start navigating through your computer. You may need to change the file format at the button since it looks for a snipping tool file first, but after doing that you should be able to open GIFs, PNGs, JPEGs and Bitmaps. Once you have the file open you’re free to annotate away. You can then save it as new file or rewrite the original. I’ve also been able to change and save as a different format that that of the original. I should note that if you save it in any format other than a Snipping Tool File (*.snip) you will not be able to edit any of your annotations later on. Saving it in those other formats burns the ink to the image and thus it becomes a part of the image and can not be edited. With this in mind you may not want to save over the original.

Once you are done annotating, you can now go ahead and insert it into MindManager or to the destination of your choice. Your ink on the image won’t be searchable or anything along those lines since MindManger can’t see the ink, it only sees it as in image. However you do have a marked up document with ink annotations in a MindManger map. I can perform this maneuver quite efficiently now, however it still takes more time than I would like, but at least its there. OneNote still wins this battle of editing images with ink directly but at least MindManger can go into the fight no longer empty handed. I really wish MindManager could handle images and ink better but until it then this is the next best option for me. It also allows me to quickly edit and annotate any picture and get it where I want!

I should note at this point that the Snipping Tool Editor gathers all you clippings and stores them to memory. If you start editing a lot of images and don’t close them you may end up acquiring many images in memory which could start to effect performance. Here is what the help file has to say…

The Snipping Tool Editor collects all of the snips you capture while Snipping Tool is loaded in memory. For example, if you snip and e-mail from the Snipping Tool menu, a copy of the snip is also collected to the Editor, where you can later modify, save, or discard the copy. Or, you can ignore the copy and it will be discarded when Snipping Tool is unloaded from memory the next time you log out or reboot.

Note: If you use Snipping Tool heavily, the Editor will accumulate a large collection of snips, in which case you may want to periodically select File, Close All or File, Exit Snipping Tool from the Editor to clear this collection and free up computer memory.

With this Snipping Tool Editor knowledge at hand you may now be asking yourself how to open it without actually making a snipping? I mean the purpose of all this was to easily annotate images. Well this was my train of thought so I immediately went to the help section of the Snipping Tool and finally came to the section about the Snipping Tool Editor. After reading through the features I came to a “Tip for advanced users.” This tip tells you exactly how to create a shortcut and open the editor directly.

You first are going to need to find your shortcut to the snipping tool itself. This may be found on your desktop but probably is tucked within the Microsoft Experience Pack Folder on the start menu. If you have trouble locating it let me know! I’d be glad to help. Once you find it I like to send it to the desktop. (Rick Click on icon, send to, send to desktop as shortcut)

Once on the desktop it’s time to edit the target. Right Click on the icon you just made on the desktop and click on properties. You should now see a window that looks like the one on the right. Fine the target line. Go to the end and enter “ /e” (That is include the space but not the quotes. Your target line should now look like the one below. Click apply and then ok. You can easily rename your shortcut anything you would like it. You can then add it to your start menu, add it as quick launch icon or leave it right there on the desktop.

Where ever you put it you now have access to free ink image editor. I love SnagIt and actually used it for all the clippings in this post, but you can’t ink with it as naturally as you can with the Snipping Tool Editor. The Snipping Tool is also free to anyone with a Tablet PC. If you want something simple to quickly add annotations to images that are inserted into MindManager or just want to draw a goofy face on a friend then the Snipping Tool Editor may just be the tool for you!

posted by Jason Dorko at 9:03 PM 0 comments links to this post