WHAT'S IT DO?
SnagIt is a screen capture program that allows you to capture an exact
copy of anything that appears on your Windows screen.
DOES IT DO WHAT IT PROMISES?
Reviewer 1. Yes.
Reviewer 2. The initial image and text
capture went quite smoothly; however, the initial video capture was a
disaster. I use two monitors and SnagIt captured both monitors in their
entirety, definitely not what I wanted. I watched the tutorial again and
this time selected Fixed Rectangle and waaa-laaa and it worked like a
charm. As I'm constantly sending software instructions to members of a
club I belong to, I can see this may end up being an extremely useful
tool. The Web Capture and Printer Capture both worked easily the first
time.
Reviewer 3. Yes, it's easy to capture images,
Web pages, printed output, or on-screen video with a push of a button.
Reviewer 4 Yes, but despite its extensive
tutorial aids, as an experienced DP professional who has used numerous
screen capture programs essentially without any documentation, I found
SnagIt surprisingly difficult to learn and use. To me, it has just too
much function in an unintuitive user interface. Or, perhaps, just too much
function in one package.
WAS IT EASY TO INSTALL?
Reviewer 1. Yes.
Reviewer 2. Absolutely!
Reviewer 3. Yes, it uses the standard Windows
setup.
Reviewer 4. Yes, it was easy, straightforward, and no problems
installing on Win XP (Home) and Win2000 systems.
GOOD POINTS?
Reviewer 1. The ability to take pictures of
specific windows, areas, and pages that are long and need scrolling. Prt
Scrn can only do the full screen. SnagIt allows you to save as a picture,
to the clipboard, email, printer, and the Web. It has a dialog box for
entering the information to send snapshots by email, to a Web server, etc.
It can also take pictures using shapes like, for example, a circular
picture. Its basic features are quick and easy to figure out with little
or no help.
Reviewer 2. The variety of input and output
features is terrific. I especially like the video.
Reviewer 3. What I really liked was few menus to navigate or
options to wade through. You select the input (Web, screen, text, video)
and the kind of output you usually prefer (jpg, bmp, etc.). One of the
best features is the SnagIt studio, where you can cut, crop, edit, or
annotate the captured image.
Reviewer 4. Outstanding functionality, the
best I've even seen in a screen capture program. If there's anything you
want to do in the screen capture arena, SnagIt can do it: screen images
(even ones that exceed screen size), text, print output stream, and more;
Supporting/auxiliary sub-applications were outstanding, annotation tools
for editing and its Catalog/Viewer facility provided exceptional
capabilities; User's Guide documentation is much more extensive than
usually provided with such a program (73 pages including an index!);
Supporting TechSmith Website documentation was extensive and very helpful,
the best I've ever seen for a utility program such as this, clearly they
use SnagIt for their own work and care about their user/customer
community.
WEAK POINTS?
Reviewer 1. A few times when I was
trying to do a region, SnagIt was selecting the entire window or screen
rather than letting me snap the region I created with the mouse. It
happened some, but not all, of the time. In the beginning, I kept
forgetting the shortcut for taking the screenshot and, if you have the
SnagIt screen open, it takes the picture of SnagIt rather than the window
you want.
Reviewer 2. While you can designate the folder for the program (I
rarely use Program Files for stuff like QuickTime, DirectX, etc.), the
catalog folder automatically goes to the Documents & Settings folder,
which I hate with a passion. I was never able to get the Scrolling Window,
which is supposed to capture the contents of a window including the parts
not seen, to work; but I'll keep trying.
Reviewer 3. There are multiple places to set properties for SnagIt:
one for input, one for output, and one place to set program preferences.
Although this isn't a complicated program, one place to change all
preferences is preferred.
Reviewer 4. Who the target user for this
application is never addressed to the best of my knowledge. But,
implicitly, it must be the technical writer, because of its complexity and
rich functionality. The casual user will give up long before mastering
this complex user interface. Thus, the price of $40 is well below what the
professional writer would be glad to pay ($90 - $150 or more?) and well
above what the casual user would pay ($10-$20?) Despite SnagIt's obvious
effort to provide a complete users manual, I found it still too much like
a list of elaborate help screens, with too little comprehensive program
description from a user's point of view. It was definitely useful, but
lacking an overview and perspective for the user.
OTHER COMMENTS?
Reviewer 1. SnagIt's compact view takes up
little space and it has keyboard shortcut information to remember it. It
has other features such as color and image filters, annotation, border,
and watermark.
Reviewer 2. None.
Reviewer 3. In my job, I have found myself in
the dubious position of making presentations for a living. I need to
include screen shots, for which I usually use ALT-PRT Screen. But with
SnagIt, I didn't realize how much I missed a tool like this. It has
built-in plug-ins for Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Internet Explorer, and
Windows Explorer. From the toolbar, press the SnagIt button from
Powerpoint and SnagIt automatically switches out of Powerpoint to the next
running application. A picture is taken and then the screen shot of menu
section is reinserted back into your presentation. Cool!
Reviewer 4. SnagIt would not work to snapshot
desktop text or other items from Paperport, a paperless office paradigm
program offered by ScanSoft, and one of the principal places it could be
used to great advantage. This turned out to be because of Paperport's
default file type, .max, their special format. Including support for this
file type in the future is something that TechSmith should consider.
WILL YOU CONTINUE USING IT?
Reviewer 1. Yes.
Reviewer 2. No response.
Reviewer 3. Yes.
Reviewer 4. Yes. I like this program, despite
all the birth pains for learning to use it.
NOTE: Techsmith, producers of SnagIT!, were
provided a copy of this review and were afforded ample opportunity to
respond to comments. No response was received.
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