As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. But taking great pictures of a dynamic product (especially in a sandbox environment) is harder than it seems.

Manual edits can make screenshots look a little better, but it’s still hard to capture the essence of your product in a static image.

A short recording can give your audience a better sense of how a certain feature works. Editing those into GIFs you feel comfortable sharing in GTM materials takes even more time, though. And if you’re working at a startup, you don’t have much of it.

Nevertheless, most product marketers are stuck cleaning up images and videos in Canva, Figma, and Adobe.

Below, we talk about the limitations of these tools and how Navattic can help you create polished product screenshots and GIFs without a messy environment or constant re-editing.

First off, they’re hard to take – logistically.

The demo environments made available to marketers aren’t always up to date, and spinning up new ones takes time and repeated asks to engineering.

You could ask a PM friend to take a screenshot for you, but that doesn’t always produce the best results.

Even when you do get access to a dev environment, it might be full of test data that doesn’t really match what you’re going for, let alone a minefield of bugs. Those can be hard to avoid, particularly if you’re recording a video.

Beyond that, screenshots and GIFs are ephemeral.

Capture how your product works today, and you’ll have to just update it in a month or two (sometimes even a week). Which leaves you in an endless recapture, re-edit cycle.

To make do, PMMs turn to tools their company already has: Canva, Figma, or Adobe. Each has its pros and cons.

Canva

Canva is so popular because it’s got a super low barrier to entry.

It’s easy to use and fast for simple edits.

However, it’s pretty limited in terms of what you can edit – you’re essentially painting over images rather than editing the product itself, and GIF quality is basic (they even have a help article titled “Downloaded design looks blurry”).

Reviewers also run into glitches and want more from its AI:

• “The new video editing software can sometimes be a little buggy. I have found that I often need to quit the desktop editor and reopen it.” (G2)
• “It would be great if the images that can be created with Canva AI could be changed by chatting with Canva AI, then add AI features to video editing as well.” (G2)

Figma and Figma Make

These tools are flexible and collaborative. But you’re still starting from a basic screenshot, and editing isn’t a breeze.

Per one user: “I wish there were a way to handle basic image editing within Figma itself. I’ve always found that limitation a bit annoying.”

Figma is a vector-based design tool, so it doesn’t support native HTML/CSS editing.

To export videos as GIFs, you need to use a plugin, and built-in AI editing features aren’t quite up to par yet, either.

One G2 reviewer says, “I would love to see an improved version of Figma AI because it's not really helpful right now. If you ask it to make something, it does something else, and whatever the AI makes, it's not up to industry standards.”

Adobe

Adobe is the most powerful of the three, but it has a steep learning curve.

It’s also expensive, and even simple tasks can be time-consuming if you aren’t familiar with the tool.

Reviewers say things like:

• “Adobe Photoshop can feel heavy on system performance, especially on lower end devices, and the learning curve is a bit steep for beginners.” (G2)
• “It's not a program that amateurs that jump straight into. I've had over a decade of experience with Photoshop but am still learning new things about it every day.” (G2)

One big shared limitation of all three: you can’t edit the underlying HTML. Which means with every UI change, you have to start from scratch.

Navattic gives PMMs a better way to showcase their product.

Because Navattic captures an HTML/CSS snapshot, not just a flat image, you can essentially clone a screen in your app, edit it in Navattic, and download it as a true-to-life image – or pull several interactive demo screens into a GIF.

As one user puts it, “The HTML/CSS capture is noticeably better than screenshot-based tools — hover states, animations, and dynamic UI elements are all preserved, which makes the demo feel like the real product rather than a static slideshow. Prospects engage with it much more naturally.”

Editing is much easier, too. Instead of trying to time your screenshot or recording just right, you can click on the part of the Capture you want to delete, blur, replace, or retype.

And if you’re editing the same element on multiple screens (like a navbar), you can apply the edit to one screen and mass apply it to all of them.

If you decide to build a full interactive demo, you don’t have to worry about editing and exporting screenshots and videos – you can give prospects and customers a chance to explore your product or new feature themselves.

Phrase, an AI-powered localization and translation platform, replaced static content with interactive demos specifically to get prospects hands-on with their product:

“We did consider building a tour using screenshots and animations, but quickly realized that we were missing the ‘in-product’ feeling.”

It only takes a few steps to create a picture-perfect screenshot.

Let’s say you’ve got some Captures with a free trial banner at the top that you want to get rid of. All you have to do is log into Navattic, then:

1. Click into one of your Captures.
2. Click the edit button (top right).
3. Click on the banner.
4. Head to Appearance (left-hand side), then click Delete.
5. Click Save.
6. Click the download icon.

→ If you want to adjust any text, click on it, then remove or retype.

→ If you need to update a profile picture, click on the picture, head to Appearance, then click Blur.

Note: If you want to apply changes to your entire collection of Captures, be sure to check “Apply edits to collection” then the Confirm button before saving.

For a full walkthrough of screenshots, check out this DemoDash video:

It’s just as simple to create a GIF from an interactive demo. First, decide how many screens you want to include in your GIF. Then:

1. Head to the Flow you want to use.
2. Click the three dots at the top, then click Export preview.
3. Select GIF.
4. Make sure it lists the correct Flow, add the number of steps you want in your GIF, and adjust how long you want to spend on each step (1.5 seconds works well).
5. Click Export.

For a full walkthrough of GIFs, check out this DemoDash video:

A single Navattic-generated image or GIF can live on your website, get dropped into your docs, anchor a LinkedIn feature announcement post, or even loop on the TV or on laptops sitting at your conference booth.

And it gives your content an edge that static images can’t.

“Being able to send it as an image or GIF spices up my emails and helps them stand out a bit more,” one G2 reviewer points out.

Plus, when there’s a small product change, you don’t have to rerecord or retake a screenshot and go through the editing rigmarole.

You just edit your Capture in Navattic and export a new version. One reviewer emphasizes:

“We went from having 1-2 product videos on our website that were quickly stale to having 10+ product walkthroughs that explore diverse customer needs and aspects of our product, and are easy to update as new product developments are pushed to production.”

Tara Twyman at Audiense, a leading audience intelligence company, uses the time saved on editing to think a bit more outside the box, setting her brand apart.

“Navattic has saved me significant time compared to creating, editing, and branding videos, allowing me to be more creative with our demos.”

Want to try it yourself? Create your free Navattic account.