Specifications

Orange County IBM PC Users’ Group
April 2004
6
Reviews…
by Gary Covington, III
That’s a funny name for a program,
but that’s exactly what this program
from TechSmith does. SnagIt is a
utility program that runs in Windows
98, ME, NT-40 SP6a, 2000, and/or XP
that “snags” what’s on the computer
screen. It can snag the screen as you
see it, OR only a portion of the screen,
OR in some cases more than what’s
visible on the screen.
The venerable PRNT SCRN has
been around almost since the dawn of
the personal computer age. SnagIt has
been providing Microsoft Windows
users with an easy way to capture and
print Windows screens since it was
first released in 1990. In “Windows 3.1
Secrets,” author Brian Livingston calls
SnagIt “the print utility Microsoft
Windows forgot.”
SnagIt allows Windows users to
capture an entire screen, an individual
window or a user defined portion of
the screen. SnagIt will ALSO capture
the entire contents of a scrolling
window! In addition, SnagIt also can
capture input directly from the
Windows clipboard or any Windows
graphic file. Once captured, SnagIt
can send the image to the printer, the
clipboard, or a graphics file.
A copy of a portion of my XP
Laptop screen with the Internet
Explorer and
Word both open
that I captured
with SnagIt and
pasted into this
MS Word article
shows the
simplest form of
“Region” capture
available.
Captured images can be pasted into
other Windows applications such as
word processors, spreadsheets, and
desktop publishing programs from the
Windows clipboard or by importing the
images from saved graphic files.
Software developers will find that
SnagIt’s full DDE support allows it’s
functionality to easily be incorporated
into other Windows applications.
SnagIt also provides MAPI support for
Windows 98 and NT, allowing
captured images to be readily sent in
an e-mail message.
The Program allows you to Capture
portions of the screen, Edit the
captured portion, and Share the results
in a variety of ways.
INPUTS: SnagIt in its current
version (7.0.3) can capture from: the
whole Screen, a Window, the Active
Window Only, a Region, a Fixed
Region, an Object, a Menu, Shapes,
Multiple Areas or SnagIt can
intercept outputs on the way to a
Printer and store them as files.
How’s that for saving paper? In the
Active Window Mode, SnagIt will
“auto-scroll” down through a
complete window, either on a
website or on your desktop screen
and capture all the text to the end of
the document. This is good for long
explanations sometimes found on web
sites, or text windows that won’t fit on
one screen.
The program will allow you to
make a freehand cut of your screen so
you can capture (or exclude) only
certain areas. In this example I have
excluded some of the icons on my
desktop and included on the ones of
interest. This is kind of an fascinating
feature.
Another interesting feature is the
ability to go to a web site and extract
all the pictures from that page of the
web site. This is good if you want to
review them off line, or use them in a
review write-up.
OUTPUTS: The outputs
can be in the form of text
files, or graphics files (.BMP,
.GIF, .JPG, .PCX, .PNG,
.TGA, or .TIF). The program
provides Outputs to: any
Printer, the Clipboard, a File,
or email.
Captured screen sections
can be “annotated” before saving.
Some of these features are very
valuable for leaving instructions on
“How-To” for some of your less
computer literate associates, or even to
remind yourself how to set up a quirky
convoluted program.
ADD-INS: SnagIt lets you chose
whether or not to place Add-Ins on the
toolbar of Word, PowerPoint, Excel,
Outlook, Internet Explorer, Adobe
Frame Maker so that it can be