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Not any more! This week has been a bit hectic - the launch of our cloud sitelet/zone (you should go check it out, by the way, AFTER you're done reading this blog entry), meetings out to wazoo - and part two in a four part lecture series that I attended yesterday. Needless to say, it didn't seem like a very productive day, but a lot ended up getting done. Just not this blog entry.
And I will digress from Cloud to this weeks topic - drop shadows.
I've seen an increased trend lately of drop shadows in our tech art, which is not a part of developerWorks' graphic style, period. There is no getting around this, and it's better to understand this upfront, so you can avoid such elements and turn in clean screen caps and get published in a timely manner. If you don't - we WILL send them back to you for recapture without drop shadows and will delay publication of your piece.
Why will we send them back to you? Because it's easier for you to recapture your screen shot than it is for us to spend all day removing them. Hopefully, while you're recapturing them, you think to yourself - I won't use drop shadows next time and avoid this rework. Maybe one of these days I will walk you through, step by step what we do to remove drop shadows, so you can see the time intense work that goes into it - maybe next week - but this week - I'm going to go over the simple settings that you will need if you're using a great little program called Snag-It to take your screen caps.
Snag-It is a screen capture program offered by TechSmith. I highly recommend it, because it's simple to use, intuitive, and does the job for a reasonable price. Now that I'm done pimpin' their software, we'll move on to what settings you'll use when enhancing your screen captures.
Say you want an arrow on your screen cap to point something out. Make your screen cap with SnagIt, and in the SnagIt Editor, select Paint Tools > Arrow Tool. Click the Style button, and select the first arrow. Set the Width to 1 and the Opacity to 100 (the default), check Antialias, and uncheck Drop shadow.
That last part is CRUCIAL - antialias will smooth out the pixels, making lines smooth instead of a jagged step look - and by UNCHECKING the drop shadow box - you will not run the chance of having drop shadows! BRILLIANT!
Let's continue on with our brilliance - what do you think?
Now say you want to emphasize an icon or other portion of your screen cap. Again, make your screen cap with SnagIt, and with the SnagIt Editor, select Paint Tools > Shape Tool. Select the shape you wish to use, preferably a rectangle or circle. Set the Width to 1, the Opacity to 100 (the default), check Antialias, and uncheck Drop shadow.
Noticing a trend here? Again, we checked the antialias box and UNCHECKED the drop shadow box.
I know, what we ask for is SO HARD, and we are INCREDIBLY demanding. /sarcasm 
BUT with this nitpicky attention to detail, we've been able to bring you clear, readable graphics to accompany our content - which you seem to appreciate, since you keep on coming back and reading it.
So until next week, I wish you good productivity and excellent time management and will see if I can't eek some of both out for myself.
