Snagit

The world’s best screen capture program just got better. Even before version 10 of Snagit, the program sported the most comprehensive feature set of any screen-grabber. Even in Snagit version 9, you could capture specific regions, windows, a full screen, scrolling windows, menus, entire Web pages, and videos. Pretty much whatever you could see on your screen, you could grab. And it featured plenty of options as well, such as a capture timer, the ability to choose whether to include cursors, and more. And there were plenty of editing tools as well, notably tools for annotating screen captures.

Users of Snagit’s version 9 may well have wondered what else could be stuffed into a screen capture program already filled with so many features. Version 10 shows there’s plenty more–and they’re important tools, not just filler to make it look as if there’s reason to upgrade. The changes weren’t as drastic as between versions 8 and 9, but they’re still quite substantial.

The most important addition to Snagit 10 is the “All-in-One Capture” feature, which is a big time saver. Rather than setting up the type of capture ahead of time (window, full screen Web page, and so on), you can instead use the “All-in-One Capture” hotkey or icon, and then decide on the fly what to capture.

There’s more to Snagit as well, including a very useful “transparency” feature, which lets you capture and use graphics without their background colors so that they can be blended more easily into your presentation or Web page. In addition, you can now add several fancy effects to your capture, such as adding a “page curl” effect which makes an image look as if one corner is being folded over as if a page were being turned.

There are other useful additions, such as more-consistent scrolling and the ability to upload videos to the Screencast.com hosting site, also owned by Techsmith, makers of Snagit. It’s now easier to fine-tune what you’ll capture by using new cross-hairs, which gives you greater control when you’re capturing a region of a screen. And grabbing text is also improved; you can now grab text from a Web page, maintain its formatting, and then format it by changing the font, size, color and so on. Snagit also gets new dressed-up menu icons.

It’s this simple: If you’re looking for a screen capture program, Snagit is the one to get. And if you already have a previous version of Snagit, it’s well worth the upgrade, if only for the “All-in-One” capture feature.

–Preston Gralla