I'm always looking for new ways to teach and provide resources for my students. In late November I attended a seminar put on by Adobe, Apple and Epson which promoted Adobe Creative Suite CS4. As usual the presenters were very good. During one of the breaks I asked the Adobe presenter what software was used to make the demo movies found on sites like PhotoshopUser.com. He said there were a number of tools available, but he really liked one called iShowU. I downloaded the trial version to see if it would work for me.
It only took me about an hour to figure out the software, rehearse, and record my first demo movie. I chose to make a demo on re-sizing images, as this is the most common question I get asked by beginners. The movie is under two minutes long and is also viewable in QuickTime from my Imagemaven Education page. Firefox and Safari on Macs should play the movie automatically. QuickTime is also available for Windows operating systems if the video does not work on your system. Go to Apple.com and download the QuickTime Player.
To see my "masterpiece" (tongue planted firmly in cheek) click the photo below. I also uploaded this on YouTube, but am very disappointed with the loss of quality that occurred. I am very new to both iShowU and YouTube, so I'm sure I missed a resolution check box somewhere during the process.
Bottom line though, I highly recommend this product to people who teach software or do presentations of any kind. iShowU can also record screen presentations and make movies out of them. Stay tuned for more of my masterpieces.
Update June 2, 2009 - I have recently discovered an even better way to make screen captures using Jing. It creates links to files stored in Screencast, so no more waiting for the QuickTime movies to download onto your hard drive. Here is a re-do of the re-size demo using Jing.
