The Wonder of Snag-it
SnagIt
When I first got it, I thought, “Big deal. Screen shots.” You can get those with the built-in system software, right? Not so much. With built-in system software you capture exactly what you see. If there’s anything below what you’re looking at, too bad. If you’re using two monitors, it captures both and it’s all too small to read. Enter Snag-it.
Snag-it allows you to capture a region, a window, or–coolest of all–a whole web page with two clicks. Well, three if you want to change your selection type. You click on how you want to capture it–say, “scrolling window,” (and you can save your preferences) then click the big, red “Capture” button. Now click anywhere on your web page and it automatically scrolls through the page and captures the whole thing. How cool is that? Want to copy it to your clipboard? Click “Copy All.” Done.
If you only wanted part of the window, but had to choose “scrolling window” to get the parts that are off screen, you can crop the resulting picture in within Snag-it. You can also add arrows, circles, or anything else that you find in a basic draw function.
A few ways I’ve used this:
1) Working around PDFs that won’t print
2) Pulling out sections of floorplans to use as maps to conference rooms. I paste them into the meeting invitation.
3) Pulling out web articles to print – much faster than making a PDF.
4) Showing colleagues how to do something in a piece of software.
It’s a Windows program. Other companies make Mac programs with similar functions. I have one, but haven’t used it yet-I don’t have the kinds of problems on the Mac that lead me to want this sort of program, partly because it’s my home computer and partly because it’s a Mac-but I’ll try to check it out and add comments.
No, I don’t have any connection to Snag-it. But if you want a copy and buy it through the link below, the site will get a small kick-back to help keep it going…but my reason for posting this article isn’t to sell anything. I just love the program.
