OT screen capture software choices?

My favorite method is to hit the "Print Screen" button on the keyboard and do a quick paste into Microsoft Photo Editor (which comes with Office).

Microsoft Photo Editor has just the basics and it launches very fast. I usually crop the image before saving.

Mike Wilson

Same here

SnagIt, 39.95 & worth every penny.

I never start a job without it

Matt B.

My personal pref is a program called lviewpro

which you can get from here.

Then I do the pritnscreen and paste and crop in lview. Its small and easy.

But there are many ways to skin a cat, HTH, JOe

Matthew A. Bush wrote on 25.9.2003 21:58

Thanks Matt! That looks better than the one I tried (which is the same price). I like the annotation features too. I'll DL and give it a try. Thanks!

Daniel

daniel wrote in news:BB994C18.DCEB% snipped-for-privacy@gratiotdesign.com:

Just curious. What to these third-party screen capture programs do that make them worth the money?

Joel Moore wrote on 26.9.2003 5:46

Save time.

Before I was doing the standard print screen routine, taking into photoshop to save as JPG (as that is better for most of my needs than BMP) and to annotate things I want to communicate to others (especially SW when there are problems). I was also cropping in photoshop. But this takes much more time and energy and is not really productive.

These utilities allow a singly keystroke to take a picture of the entire screen, or a selected area, a dialogue box, button etc.. You can configure it to auto name the files, or auto open a save as dialogue, or even open it in a new email to send immediately.

I am also using this to document my process in a simple way. Then using ACDC I can print thumbnail images with the titles I give them as a tool for my clients or for my memory.

I find it really useful, and would use it more if I have a faster tool, and this one from TechSmith looks worth 35 USD.

Cheers, Daniel

I use it to create "how to" docs amongst other things. My favorite feature is probably the text capture with auto scroll. I use that feature a lot get a list of all files in a dir. It also installs as a printer so I can print directly to a .bmp, .pcx, .tif, .jpg, .gif, .png & .tga files. All of these file format also have options where I can change color depths and/or quality. If you want to get fancy you can create .avi files for tutorials. Probably lots of other stuff I never use. A new feature is "WEB Capture" that pulls every image from a specific web page & store them in a catalog to view, save manipulate or print.The trail version id free so check it out.

Matt B.

Matthew A. Bush wrote on 26.9.2003 13:40

I had not noticed it installed that - interesting. I just did a quality test:

1. window screen capture with snagit
2. print to snagit
3. save as JPG from SW.

The qualitative result is:

1. window capture is same resolution as SW Save as JPG. However, the edges on a shaded model are thicker in the snagit capture than in the save as.
2. the snagit printer output is a larger DPI file (I think based on the page size - it may still be 92dpi) but is much lower quality - much jaggier edges.

Based on this, I would say that for speed the snagit is very good for screen capture, but for slightly better quality, save as is better (but slower, and I always feel I am risking accidentally saving my parts as something I did not intend...)

This is a nice product with good features. I would also recommend it based on my use this morning.

Daniel

When you print from SnagIt you can also set the dpi. After hitting the print go to Properties>Advanced, under graphics you can set the DPI, default is

200x200 I think, other options are 100x100, 300x300 & 600x600. There are also some other setting there that you can play with. Hope this helps some.

Matt B.

Matthew A. Bush wrote on 26.9.2003 15:18

Cool. Just tried it. But I would still say that the line quality looks better from the straight screen shot or better from the SW save as.

Thanks! Dan

PrintKey 2000 is free. Works nicely for basics.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems