Sequencing the captures as shown in your video is a great idea--allows the person making the screenshots to stay in storytelling flow.
After that, I find the easy publishing, commenting, and one click round trip annotation features of Skitch to be extremely compelling: http://skitch.com/
For the part that comes after taking the screenshot, Skitch offers a particularly slick workflow without the separate Preview app.
Since both your app and Skitch allow one click capturing with a history of captures, perhaps you could emphasize the storytelling aspect of your approach. Maybe they own the mindshare for annotated image discussions, but you own the category of screenshot sequences.
Ideas: Eliminate subsequent capture button clicks until clicking Done. Drag to select and snap, use a key to switch between marquee rectangle and gui control? Show frames as a filmstrip while capturing. Flow the other commenting and annotation steps.
PS. It's a different situation, but just yesterday I had to crop a dozen very high resolution JPEGs into 3 or 4 separate images each, and was disappointed that Preview couldn't just mark all the crops I wanted at once. Maybe yours could allow multiple rectangles at once, then "screenshot" them all at once.
I have the idea of "screenshot sequences" in mind when I made Storyteller, but I wasn't sure how best to highlight the concept, so I used 'step-by-step', which may not be good enough, considering you highlighted it, was hoping creative HN folks like you could suggest some :)
Yup, continuously taking multiple screenshots without having to click the 'Capture' button, can be achieved by a global shortcut key (I've set it to Cmd+Alt+s for my current build).
I like the idea of floating previously capture screenshots like a filmstrip while capturing, I'm considering using a semi-transparent HUD for that, thoughts?
I'll be keeping Storyteller simple and easy to use, so I won't be implementing simultaneous image crops anytime soon .
After that, I find the easy publishing, commenting, and one click round trip annotation features of Skitch to be extremely compelling: http://skitch.com/
For the part that comes after taking the screenshot, Skitch offers a particularly slick workflow without the separate Preview app.
Since both your app and Skitch allow one click capturing with a history of captures, perhaps you could emphasize the storytelling aspect of your approach. Maybe they own the mindshare for annotated image discussions, but you own the category of screenshot sequences.
Ideas: Eliminate subsequent capture button clicks until clicking Done. Drag to select and snap, use a key to switch between marquee rectangle and gui control? Show frames as a filmstrip while capturing. Flow the other commenting and annotation steps.
PS. It's a different situation, but just yesterday I had to crop a dozen very high resolution JPEGs into 3 or 4 separate images each, and was disappointed that Preview couldn't just mark all the crops I wanted at once. Maybe yours could allow multiple rectangles at once, then "screenshot" them all at once.