Software
Review of: |
 SnagIt
was demonstrated at last months General Meeting and a demo is far better
than a written description, but bear with me. The usual way a newcomer
to computing learns to do a screen capture is to press the print screen
key to the right of the upper row of number keys. This sends an image of
the screen to your clipboard. Then, if you don’t have a photo editing software
program, you have to open MS Paint which is in your Windows accessory folder.
You then paste the image from your clipboard into Paint and then save the
graphic image with a file name.
Screen capture programs such as SnagIt eliminate all those steps — and even allow you to capture several successive screens if needed. You start by telling SnagIt what part of the screen you want to capture: the whole screen, the active program window, a region of the screen or just a menu. Then you tell SnagIt what you want to do with the capture: send it to your printer, save it to a file or send it to a SnagIt catalog. The SnagIt tool bar is usually minimized at the bottom of your screen. You make your selection decisions using this toolbar and all selections can be changed at anytime. Once you have captured a screen image, you can immediately convert it to grayscale, monochrome or halftone. A sneaky but neat feature of the program is a capture timer. When this feature is enabled, you can set the time increments that SnagIt will capture your screen. In other words, create a time-lapse video to show desktop activity. Why would someone want this feature? Think about invisibly looking over your teenagers shoulder to see the Websites he/she is surfing. You may be surprised. A sophisticated feature of SnagIt is the ability to capture motion on screen. In other words, if you want to demonstrate certain steps in a program, tracking your cursor movement and feature selection, SnagIt will capture it as an AVI file. The more you think about this ability to capture cursor movement and feature selection, the more ideas come to mind. SnagIt is a product of TechSmith CorporationSingle user price for SnagIt is $39.95 but discount prices are offered to User Groups such as Alamo PC Organization.
Clarke Bird is editor of PC Alamode and can use all the utility software help he can find. |