Review: Techsmith Snagit 9 screen capture

Research on the internet is now a full-on multimedia experience and simply being able to capture text is no longer enough.

Snagit is a program that captures screens, web pages and videos, then brings them together into a finished document.

The utility sits as an icon in the system tray and also responds to the Print Screen button. More specific capture options can be selected by double-clicking on the icon to show the capture profiles.

The region profile is capable of very accurate captures; a window appears showing a magnified view of the area around the cursor.

Advanced options include the ability to capture an entire web page; Snagit scrolls through the page and combines the images.

This is a useful for anyone doing web design as the printing options on most browsers are not ideal. Links in web pages can also be captured.

Snagit can also capture what’s happening on screen as a video file. The call out and text options as seen in the popular Camtasia alternative aren’t present, but individual frames can be captured.

Once captures have been collected they can then be edited. The interface is similar to the ribbon-style interface of Microsoft Office 2007 and tags can be applied to grabs. You can add arrows and boxes to your captures, as well as highlight certain areas by filling them with a specific colour.

There are plenty of plug-ins available for Snagit, including a Firefox module to send captures direct to a blog (such as Wordpress and Moveabletype). However, it’s something of a disappointment that the only office exporting option is to Microsoft Office; we had hoped for an Open Office export option.

If you frequently capture screenshots, Snagit works very well and comes highly recommended.