Free Programs

Snagit

When it comes to premium software for capturing what's on your computer screen, SnagIt 10 is one of the best in its category. As with other apps, you can choose exactly how much of the screen you'll shoot. Snagit's edge is that it now combines the most oft-selected capture profiles into one, so that reaching for the Print Screen keyboard shortcut gives you a mega-tool for capturing either the whole screen, a window, a region, or a scrolling area, with just some considered cursor placement and a single click. We have to admit that the new default capture profile may confuse at first, but those who find it too much of a visual riot can always swap in a different default.

In addition to snagging images, Snagit has separate capture settings for copying Web sites, text, and even video; you can record your screen's action in the AVI format. This version of Snagit improves on the text capture tool, retaining the style formatting in Snagit's editor and adding some editing tools so you can further manipulate the text.

As with the previous version, which overhauled Snagit's user-friendly editor, Snagit 10's image editor stores screenshots in an icon library that's accessible from the main pane, making it a breeze to revisit past shots, even if you've never saved them to your drive.

The search bar is also a lifesaver for finding the automatically-indexed screenshots of yore. Though Snagit's editing tools aren't as professional as some other high-end editors, it does provide a satisfying array of tools to annotate, resize, recolor, and otherwise manipulate images with hyperlinked hot spots, tags, and visual effects, like the newly introduced page-curl effect. We think a few of the stamps, art, and tools could be more versatile, but we were able to do most of what we set out to accomplish on a daily basis with speed, ease, and consistent results.