I ♥ SnagIt! I began with SnagIt 6.0 several years ago when a review copy was brought back from a Comdex conference by Bill and Faye Patrick. The captures I used most were images from the Web that I pasted onto greeting cards, and window or full-screen captures that I included in newsletter articles and handouts for a class I was teaching. Now comes SnagIt 8.2, and WOW! Five capture modes and many output choices for what to do with those captures! The different combinations are called "profiles."

First, let me tell you how simple it can be. Just three steps to begin: 1) select an input mode, 2) select an output type, and 3) click on the big red Capture button or press the Prt Scr global hotkey on the keyboard. The image captured can then be edited with the Paint Tools by cropping, adding callouts, special effects or text, or making other markups; and then saved as a file (including PDF), converted to a different file format (png, bmp, cmp, cur, emf, eps, gif, ico, etc), copied into another program, printed out, e-mailed, or uploaded to a Web site.

The five capture modes include: Image capture, Text capture saves in .txt ASCII format, Video capture, Web capture, and SnagIt Printer capture that creates PDF files. Basic capture profiles (an input, an output, and an effect if desired) include: a Region of the screen, a Window, a Full Screen, a Scrolling Window, and a Web Page with Links. Some other capture profiles are: Scrolling Window to PDF, Menu with time delay, Object, Images from web page, Text from window, and Record Screen Video. The program allows you to create your own profiles, and other profiles such as SnagIt to Flickr and DOS Screen Capture can be downloaded from the TechSmith Web site at www.techsmith.com. The Firefox extension is a screen capture toolbar for the Firefox browser, Adobe Photoshop output is another download, as is SnagIt to Skype. Excel, Word, and PowerPoint Outputs are considered Accessories when you look for them on the menu. If you’re capturing an image of a check, the account number, routing number, etc. can be pixilated so it isn’t readable, and interactive Flash hotspots can be added into PowerPoint presentations so that when the spot is moused over, additional text or images are shown.

At www.training.techsmith.com in the SnagIt Learning Center are a variety of tutorials – written tutorials in HTML and PDF that are step-by-step guides, video tutorials for both Versions 7 and 8, the Getting Started Guide that normally comes with the software, and User-to-User forums. The forums are free, but you must register in order to post questions and it’s a two-step process where one signs up online and then receives an e-mail with a link to complete the registration. The forums are located at www.forums.techsmith.com. Also, there is an online newsletter that is delivered by e-mail if you choose. The amount of support is outstanding.

Mostly, I have continued to use the Image Capture mode. This can be anything you can see on your screen, be it a game, a software application, a recipe on a Web site, something from your scanner, or an article. A recent capture I have made was an article about a giant hog the author was calling "Hogzilla" from an outdoor online magazine. My husband doesn’t use the computer, but he wanted to read the article so I captured the pages and copied them into PowerPoint slides that I then printed out for him.

More recently, I captured to the clipboard my investment club’s portfolio from ATT/Yahoo Finance and copied it to a blank Word document which I distributed at the meeting. It was neat with the colored arrows, etc. At a Windows Special Interest Group meeting, I demonstrated the reports that can be created in Family Tree Maker with a PowerPoint presentation created from screen captures made with SnagIt. In that presentation, I used red callout arrows to point out details and added text to explain the details. When I wrote a newsletter article today, I captured the Favorites star in the Internet Explorer 7.0 browser to illustrate what I was talking about. And one of the most "interesting" uses I’ve made was as I was checking the links on my church’s Web site, I discovered that one of them (apparently misspelled) sent the user to a porno Web site, so I sent the Webmaster an e-mail and a capture of the homepage.

A trial version can be downloaded at www.techsmith.com or the program can be purchased there.