Taking screenshots is a common need for most computer users, but sometimes the default PrintsScreen function is not qualified to grab images the way you want. Over 20 years ago, TechSmith Corporation came up with an answer to satisfy this demand by developing SnagIt, and after all these years of improvements it became a powerful screen-capture utility with some mind-blowing features that allow you to capture and edit screenshots in ways you never thought possible.
SnagIt Window
Installation & Requirements
The installation process of SnagIt certainly lives up to modern standards as it completes in just 1 or 2 minutes and doesn’t require any troublesome settings. You can choose a typical install for the program or select the custom mode and uncheck any feature you might not desire.
We were glad to see no useless toolbar or adware-like options such as a default search engine were present as choices during the installation. Installing SnagIt is a fast and highly automated task with no special knowledge required, making it easy to be carried out by anyone.
Derived from the fact that SnagIt is a screen-capture utility, its system requirements are fairly low (at least a1.0 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 60 MB or free space) and is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7.
Interface
At first glance the slick grey interface displays all the main features in a readable and organized layout within 3 distinctive areas.
The main content area provides all the predefined capture profiles, viewable as large descriptive thumbnails or as a classic list, enabling easy access even for first-time users. The default capture profiles supply multiple ways for taking screenshots: the classic Full Screen mode, Copy to Clipboard, Web Page as PDF with links, Free hand, Menu with time delay and last but not least the All-in-One mode. Besides the Full Screen mode which is a basic function, all the other capture profiles give us brilliant ways to copy and paste our screenshots within other applications, easily share web pages as PDF documents and still keep the contained links active, grab images as freehand shapes or delay the screen capture and have enough time to navigate through folders and applications to the desired object.
The All-in-One mode is an innovative feature, not present within other screen-capture programs, that combines the Region, Window and Scrolling Window modes into a single profile, in many situations eliminating the need to create custom profiles, thus a precious time-saver.
Below the main content area lie the Profile Settings for Input, Output, Effects and Options, providing even more ways to take, save and edit screenshots. Besides the custom region and freehand capture the Input options lets us choose other shapes to capture images, such as ellipse, rounded rectangle and others. The vast array of settings places at our fingertips a virtually unlimited number of possibilities to customize the way we capture images. By allowing users to choose output formats and add effects even before taking screenshots SnagIt prevents a great deal of manual post-editing and is a remarcable way to increase your productivity. Placed to the left of the Profile Settings, the large Capture button provides through a small blue arrow all the basic contents you can opt to capture: Image, Text, Web and even Video capture which is highly limited though.
The left sidebar displays a Quick Launch panel, enabling speedy access to the SnagIt Editor and Image Organizer, and another panel for Related Tasks such as image conversion, print settings, profile organizer, accessories manager and SnagIt OneClick, a useful feature that grants one-click access to the program’s main functions. SnagIt OneClick is basically an auto-hiding menu that you can quickly activate by clicking or hovering your mouse over it (depending on how you choose to set it), while SnagIt is running in the system tray and make quick screen captures without having to open the program’s interface.
The SnagIt Editor delivers a comprehensive set of tools for modifying and enhancing our images. Make no mistake about it, this image editor is useful in any line of work, providing all the basic editing functions, multiple markup tools such as arrows, speech-bubbles, stamps and others, support for transparency, custom graphics functions that allow combining multiple captures, a spotlight & magnify tool to draw attention to specific portions of your capture and dozens of filters and color or graphic effects to let your creativity run free.
Deeply inspired from the graphical layout of the Microsoft Office suite, the interface of SnagIt is highly intuitive, managing to provide piles of features in a well organized visual manner.
Pros
- Powerful screenshot utility containing over 40 different ways for capturing images, multiple output formats and a wide variety of filters, effects and markup tools.
- Enables easy sharing for your captures as URLs or via e-mail, Skype, FTP or adding them to other applications such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and MindManager.
- The integrated batch processing function enables conversion of multiple captures simultaneously, adding effects and auto-renaming.
- Excellent support service based on the short response times from the SnagIt support staff and an online catalog of free tutorials, besides the standard FAQ and manual.
Cons
- For a long time there was only a Windows version available and even if a Mac version has been released recently, it lacks many features present within the Windows version and still needs a substantial amount of improvements.
- Video capture capabilities are very limited, this application mainly focusing on image captures.
- SnagIt can be considered as a fairly expensive product, not just because of the 50$ initial purchase fee but also because only minor upgrades are free, the major ones being priced at 25$.
Alternatives
Many screen-capture applications are attempting to compete with SnagIt, some of them relying on a lower price and/or acceptable amount of features such as FullShot, HyperSnap and Easy Screen Capture, others providing a rather limited collection of functions but accessible for free such as Jing, also developed by Techsmith, PicPick, FastStone Capture and EasyCapture. However none of the programs listed above are as complete as Snagit which holds some innovative features you won’t be able to find anywhere else.
Conclusion
For frequent users of the screen capture function that are striving to improve their workflow and save precious time, SnagIt unquestionably delivers the goods, as the most complete screenshot application currently available.
No comments:
Post a Comment