The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
SnagIt/32 4.1
Bernadette Houghton
 bernieh@iaccess.com.au

SnagIt is a real little ripper! Over the years, I've used several different screen capture programs, but none have impressed me as much as SnagIt. Not only has it saved me lots of time and hassle, it has also enabled me to reclaim hard disk space occupied by a bulky image-editing program I used to process my screen shots.

SnagIt captures not only screen images, but also editable text and videos. It handles drop-down boxes and menu flyouts without a hiccup, and you can even vet your screen shots before you save them to disk.

How it works

Installation is very quick, very straightforward and very easy. The first time you run SnagIt (and thereafter, any time you choose), the Quick Start Capture Wizard walks you through a no-nonsense three-step process of setting up SnagIt. If you don't use the Wizard, priming SnagIt is still very simple (Figure 1). Just select the appropriate capture mode (screen image, text or video), then choose which part of the screen to capture. Your choices are:

  • Screen, which captures your whole screen
  • Window, which is any window or portion of a window (depending on the application)
  • Active Window
  • Region, a rectangular area you delineate with your mouse
  • Fixed Region, a rectangular area you delineate by specifying screen co-ordinates
  • Bitmap File
  • Clipboard
  • Full-screen DOS
  • Menu, for capturing drop-down menus.
I f you choose, SnagIt will capture the cursor, the entire contents of vertical scrolling windows and the contents of the clipboard each time you refresh it. It can stamp captures with the date and time, and depending on the capture mode you're using, will offer other options. For instance, you can capture screen images in colour, monochrome or greyscale. You can scale images, dither and invert colours and perform some other colour manipulation operations (Figure 2). If you're capturing editable text, you can control the space and column formatting, font and word wrap.


Figure 1. SnagIt's main screen


Figure 2. Color Substitution dialog

Once you've pressed the hotkey to invoke a capture, SnagIt sends it to your printer, a file (BMP, PCX, GIF, JPEG, TIF formats supported) or the Catalog. The Catalog is really just a folder that you've nominated to keep your captured files. You can choose multiple outputs if you wish, and e-mail your captured files, providing you have a 32-bit MAPI e-mail client. One of my favourite features is the ability to preview files and crop them--I no longer need a separate program for this. Previewing is very fast; almost instantaneous in the case of screen images, and only a couple of seconds delay in the case of text and video. One of my greatest hassles with most screen capture programs is that I have to keep interrupting my thought processes to deal with the housekeeping of my captured files. SnagIt has an answer for this, with it's ability to name files automatically. Alternatively, if you choose, SnagIt will prompt you for a name each time, or simply overwrite the previous file.

The Catalog Browser displays thumbnails of all supported graphic files in the current folder, including text and video (Figure 3). Unfortunately, it doesn't support PCX files, so you can't display those. Most basic file operations are available, including Sort, Rename, Delete, Copy and Move. Double-clicking on a thumbnail presents the image at full size, and in this new window you can also crop images if necessary.

With Video Capture, SnagIt takes a series of screen shots at regular intervals, saving the results in an AVI file. You can view the file in the Catalog Browser, either as a video clip or frame-by-frame. If you choose, SnagIt will save individual frames as image files or print them.


Figure 3. The Catalog Browser

Assessment

If you haven't already guessed, I'm mightily impressed with SnagIt. It's a real joy to use, and I suspect it has found itself a permanent niche on my computer.

Reprinted from the February 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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