Motivation: Techsmith defines state of the art screen and video capture
Features: Techsmith Snagit 7 provides comprehensive screen, video and web capture.

Snagit is all about getting the best possible computer screen image or video capture. Wait a second - you ask, "as a graphics creator why would I be interested in a image capture program ?" You create graphics not capture them. Right. But just consider for a moment how often you capture screen images. Occasionally you need to pull off the screen images from a clever Flash presentation. Or take a snap of a screen for a client to show work in progress. Or heavens to mergatroid - add screen captures as elements of a composite illustration. Or simply need to illustrate how your or your clients latest software gizmo works.

In short these days you may legitimately need to answer the following- why do I need a screen capture program as part of my graphics toolset ? Well consider the number of times per day you are involved in the following tasks:
1)complete or partial screen capture;
2)color duplication/replication;
3)capturing text from web page;
4)simple CAST corrections for images, particularly captured ones;
5)adding simple annotations and captions to an image or screen capture;

Figure 1 - Snagit Graphics Editor invoked immediately immediately after capture

Snagit: Well Beyond Printscreen

The tried and true PrintScreen and ALT+Printscreen seems good enough to get a screen capture - why complicate things with a special utility? Well Snagit supplies three good reasons - versatility, magnifier and post processing aids.

Versatility means users have a choice between capture to clipboard, capture to file, capture to Print, capture to instant messaging, capture to email, capture to personal catalog, capture to Snagit's own full power graphics editor. But there is more than versatile capture output choices. Snagit has an unbelievable set of basic screen capture options. One can of course capture full screens but also any designated window including any dialogs and pop-up windows. But there is also multi-capture of screen regions(note the plural, multi-window/region capture with Snagit doing some rather nifty auto layout work). There is also two very helpful specialized captures. First, time-delayed capture allows menus fully laid out to be captured. As well Snagit is able to pull in the complete contents of scrolling windows,

But there is more. Snagit capture at selected schedule, captures in monochrome, grayscale or eight possible color depths. Snagit can capture text only (very useful with the spaghetti layout of some websites). And finally Snagit can capture to video at 24 frames per second which means that all scrolling, panning, zooming and drag and drop operations on a Window are captured with full fidelity. And then the specific options for capture are impressive:
edges - adds pro-style edges with drop shadow, fade, torn, sawtooth, beveled, wave, and custom look;
borders - also can add borders of user controlled size, color, shadow;
captions/annotation - user customized phrase, position, font color, size and type;
trim - several trim settings and autotrim options are available;
watermark - several options for placing of watermark on the captured image;
And these are not all of the options available.

Given this versatility and so many options, people might be overwhelmed by Snagit. But again, Techsmith designers have done a superb job of making getting started and staying productive in Snagit a priority. First, the Getting Start manual is a brilliant exercise of how to use Snagit to describe its own operations. Concise but thorough, users from the beginning know all the major options - and can easily use the manual
as a reference card to Snagit operations. Next, Snagit has a set of profiles for all of the most important captures. As the screenshot shot, there are 6 basic capture profiles, and 6 'other' captures. But below that there are My Profiles - where users can save their own customized profiles.

I have only two customized profiles because I have used most of the presets and customized them - every time you change a preset profile, Snagit lets you chose to save the profile - either overwriting a preset or creating your own - I tend to overwrite the presets. So now I have 14 different captures that I am confident will do the exact capture I want. This is great.

But there is more help. See the Capture, Edit, and Organize tabs - Snagit has basic operations well organized and laid out - so it is hard to get lost in doing some task. Need more help ? Of course you could press the Help menu; but more useful the first time is to click the Tour button in the upper right of the main Snagit Window. This launches a Camtasia Studio video of how to perform basic operations in Snagit. After taking this tour and reading the Getting Started reference , users will be pretty well set to go.

But there is even more help. See the "Add New Profile Wizard" button at the bottom left of the screen. It walks you carefully through the process of setting up your own profile - no need to borrow one of the presets. The Wizard explains each of the major options and your choices in more detail so you get the exact capture profile you want. Finally as you do the capture, Snagit has popup windows and mouse-over hover hints that remind users of their options as they do screen screen captures. In sum, it is hard to go wrong with Snagit captures with all the coaching and help; but also because of the Magnifier and the precision of the actual captures.

Magnifier and Precision Captures

Think of Snagit like a smart digital camera of your computer screen. Snagit makes it easy for users to take the perfect screen capture minimizing the need for post processing. This is one of the biggest payoffs for using Snagit. And the key to those precision captures is the magnifier.

First, many screen captures are of windows or dialogs or sub-windows on screen. Snagit is smart about capturing sub-windows or objects (an Activex calendar control or JavaBean datagrid are 2 examples of objects). Snagit is fairly smart about guessing at what object you want to capture by just clicking on a region within the object - better if its close to the border of the object. But inevitably you need to capture an adhoc region of the screen. Enter the magnifier tool
.
First and foremost the magnifier allows you to see that you are getting precisely the screen capture you want. The magnifier not only gives users instructions on how to do the screen capture but then automatically gets out of the way when you do so. As soon as the mouse cursor comes close to touching the edge of the magnifier dialog it automatically repositions itself at the diagonally opposite side of the screen. In short it gets out of the way and will do so twice if, at the opposite side of the screen the magnifier dialog is obscuring the end of the screen capture.

Not only that but the magnifier dialog, as seen in the screen shot at the right, also provides a 2x close-up or magnified view of where the cursor is relative to the screen. This allows users to make the perfect start and end to their screen capture. This process then minimizes what takes undoubtedly the most time - cropping the screen capture to the exact fit to window, dialog box but more often of late , to an arbitrarily shaped-form or region.

For example, tabbed dialog windows have become very popular in web application development environs from BEA Workshop through Dreamweaver to Java Studio Creator. But quite often the screen is cluttered with extraneous icons or information if the windows is snagged with a simple rectangular screen capture. So extra-time must be spent to erase the clutter region. Snagit makes capture of such irregular shapes easy. Just on time saved with the magnifier and precise screen captures, Snagit can reduce capture time by half. But there is more - the post processing options are very helpful as well

Post Processing with Snagit

As implied, the time spent after the screen capture - cropping, touch-up, and adding annotations and captions can easily double or triple the total time spent doing screen capture work. As someone fairly proficient in Draw, Illustrator, PaintShop Pro and Photoshop - this appeared to be game over. Take the capture, thank you very much Snagit and do the final edits in more familiar programs. But Snagit come equipped with 2 graphics editors for doing post processing which are surprisingly effective and maybe harbingers of what is to come in the graphics processing arena.

First, for text and video captures, there is no doubt - it is easier to move the data into Star Office or Word and Camtasia Studio or Adobe Premiere Elements. But for adding captions, annotations, and highlights to a freshly captured image - I found to my surprise that I was using Snagit's built-in graphics editor (see Figure 1 at the top) which pops up immediately after screen capture. The editor is geared to doing highlights, pointers, captioning, and figure annotations.

Note you have 14 tools for adding captions. Select a tool and all the properties associated with that tool instantly popup in the screen. So it is dead simple to make the arrow tool red, 4 pixels wide and having a drop shadow white, 2 x 2 pixel offset and 70% opaque. Or to make lettering yellow, Arial Black font, 12 points in size and also having a drop shadow. Or make the highlight pen light green with opacity of 45%. The big drawback ? Snagit's Graphic editor does not remember the objects you create - they are immediately merged into the bitmap of the captured screen image. You cannot edit - only delete an added annotation, highlight or caption arrow.

Snagit Studio, the other graphics editor, does keep track of all the objects you create on screen so you can edit them at any time. The problem - in Snagit Studio important properties such as opacity, drop shadow, vertical as well as horizontal alignment of text are not associated with objects. So users are don't have the convenience and speed of editing afforded in Snagit's default Graphics editor.

So users have to be careful when using the Graphics Editor. Usually I do the safe, must-have highlights, captions and/or annotations in Graphics editor or do no edits at all. However, be forewarned you can get an awful lot of work done in Graphics editor very quickly. It is addictive. I am fond of sending notes to technical support with a screen capture with arrows pointing to exactly where things are going wrong. The technical support people are really more responsive when you do so.

Summary

Lets look at the series of 5 tasks that we said graphics people might find themselves doing a fair amount of time during the course of their work. Lets see now how Snagit would help:
1)complete or partial screen capture - Snagit.
2)color duplication/replication - Snagit then use eye dropper tool to read off RGB values.
3)capturing text from web page - Snagit with text read option set and output to clipboard.
4)simple CAST corrections for images, particularly captured ones - Snagit and use color correction tools.
5)adding simple annotations and captions to an image or screen capture - Snagit and edit.
Every operation is simple, fast, reliable. Street price for Snagit 7 , Windows only - $40. Case closed.