SnagIt Reviewer's Comments
Whether you’re looking to capture images, color values, video games or video clips, our #1 pick and the "TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award" winner, SnagIt by TechSmith Corporation, really delivers. We found this software phenomenally easy to use and gave it a perfect score in every one of our rating criteria.
SnagIt easily dominates the competition through the sheer number of items it captures, its unbeatable editing capacity and the broadest number of help support options in the industry.
SnagIT version 8.2 includes:
- Create Interactive Presentation Graphics
- Bring Your Flash Videos into PowerPoint
- Resize, Reshape and Rotate Callouts
- Improved Add–Ins for Office, Firefox and COM
- SnagIt Works With 64–Bit OS and IE 7
- Apply the Same Effect to Multiple Areas of a Capture
- Communicate Visually over Skype
SnagIt is extremely simple to use, broken up into three easy–to–use sections: Capture, Edit and Organize. Within the Capture section, you can choose your capture method, offering everything from a full–scrolling webpage screenshot to a time–delayed video game screenshot.
Once you have your capture, the program automatically moves you to the Edit section, where you can resize, annotate and add numerous special effects to your capture. The Organize section arranges them for efficient storage and retrieval.
Feature Set:
SnagIt comes with one of the largest feature sets around, offering nearly every feature we looked for in the review. A quick toolbar increases your capture speed by either using the last capture method applied or by allowing you to change your method through an option menu quickly. You can also install the toolbar within a number of Microsoft programs, like Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer.
Other useful features offered by this program include a preview window, which shows you a zoomed thumbnail shot of whatever your cursor is hovering over and a webpage catalog maker, which allows you to quickly gather all of your screen captures and create a webpage in five simple steps. This program does not offer voice commands.
SnagIt also offers a batch converter, which allows you to alter large numbers of files at the same time. For example, if you have 100 wedding photos and want them all to have the same file type and border style, simply load them into the batch converter and it will do the rest.
Ease of Installation:
We found SnagIt incredibly easy to install and once installation is complete, you can take a tutorial of the software. During installation, you can also select in which Microsoft program you’d like the quick toolbar installed.
Help/Support:
TechSmith Corporation’s help and support for SnagIt is outstanding. The program’s tutorials are extremely informative, walking you step–by–step through each capture method available. There is also support provided in the form of FAQs, a knowledge base, online form, email support and a telephone support line.
Capture:
SnagIt offers, hands down, the widest variety of capture methods around. We were impressed with its use of filters to help better customize items being captured (i.e. color, size, edge effects) and the number of options available for sending items once captured.
This product gives you the ability to capture whole web pages, no matter how far down you have to scroll to see the entire page, and there’s a freehand tool so you can trace around exactly what you need captured. You can also take screenshots of Direct X Applications, video games and capture any video that appears on your screen, but it can only save to AVI format.
You can also easily capture and edit text and with this product’s unique website image capture, just type in a URL and the program will pull all the images from that web page and save them for you as separate image files. SnagIt also lets you create custom profiles for saving screen captures and makes a convenient wizard available to walk you through the process.
Edit:
SnagIt offers every editing tool we looked for, including the ability to add new images called “stamps” onto your screenshot, change the viewing perspective of your screen capture and add annotations.
The program’s eyedropper tool allows you to determine the RGB values of any color quickly and there are plenty of other editing tools that allow you to clean up, tighten up and improve the overall look of your screen captures.
Summary:
With a perfect score in every category and some of the best screen captures we’ve seen to date—not to mention its easy–to–use format and outstanding help support—SnagIt by TechSmith Corporation captured not only our confidence, but is now the method we use to capture screenshots for our review pages.
