Snagit posts

Snagit is a flexible, powerful tool for capturing some or all of your screen, and it's now available for OS X as a public beta. It docks on a screen edge, where you can either click to pop open the controls, or drag it anywhere as a window.

Snagit is extremely easy to use, thanks to a feature called "all-in-one capture." By clicking one big red button, you can capture a selected area, a whole screen, or just one window. If you're grabbing something with a vertical scrollbar, like a long webpage, you can use Snagit's scrolling capture (which is also part of the all-in-one button) to get the whole thing.

Snagit doesn't stop at capture, though: it also offers a lot of handy editing options. Word balloons, arrows and captions are easily added - the Mac version can even bend arrows, which is a neat feature that Snagit for Windows doesn't have. Snagit also allows you to combine two images with a simple drag, which is something I wish my favorite Mac screencap app, Skitch, could do.

All in all, Snagit's Mac beta is slick-looking and stacked with useful features.

If you, like us, capture and edit a lot of screenshots, the new version of SnagIt might interest you. We have covered past versions so let's focus on what's new with 9.0.

Version 9 adds a sequential capture feature, automatic or custom tagging, visual bookmarking, ribbon-based menus, multi-image capabilities, a quick access toolbar and other features. The TechSmith web page lists better work flow as one of the main new features. You can decide if you want to capture everyhing and edit later or capture one image, edit, capture another, edit, etc.

The version is free to try and $49.95 to purchase.

Last week we told you that TechSmith was offering a free version of the Camtasia Studio screencasting software for free. As luck would have it, TechSmith is also giving away free licenses for SnagIt, the company's popular screen capture utility.

The only catch is that just like with the Camtasia Studio offer, TechSmith is offering an older version of SnagIt for free. If you want all the latest features, you'll have to upgrade to SnagIt 8.2, which will set you back $20. But SnagIt 7.2.5 (the free version) is still quite a few steps up from the Windows print screen button. Here are a few of the features you get with SnagIt:

• Capture a region
• Capture a file
• Capture a scrolling window (like an entire web page)
• Capture a freehand region (draw a shape around the portion of the screen you want to capture

SnagIt 8.2 adds Vista compatibility, the ability to save a file to an application like Word, Excel, or even Flickr, and new printing options.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Here at Download Squad, we're always on the lookout for good screenshot and screencasting utility. Especially free screenshot and screencasting utilities. And it helps if they're cross-platform applications.

That's why Jing looks so exciting. It's a free, cross-platform (Mac and Windows) application for taking screenshots or making screencasts. Jing is from the developers of Snagit and Camtasia Studio, both of which are commercial applications. It's not clear whether Jing will remain free after it loses its beta status, but for now it's a pretty powerful little application.

It captures screencasts as Flash files, which you can upload and share with other users. Jing is tightly integrated with Screencast.com, letting you upload and share files from within the application. After the jump, check out a quick video we made showing how to split an audio file with Audacity.

[via Digital Inspiration]

The folks at lifehack.org, (not LifeHacker.com) have cooked up the 17 best Firefox extensions that will make blogging easy. I'm sure you've seen some of these before, but just in case you haven't seen them all, they are:

1. Google Notebook
2. Session Manager
3. coComment
4. Speak It
5. DocuFarm
6. ScribeFire (formerly performancing)
7. Deepest Sender
8. Resizable Text Area
9. Spellbound
   
10. Google toolbar
11. Tabinta
12. Split Browser
13. Copy Plain Text
    
14. Copy As HTML Link
15. Web Developer
16. SnagIt
17. Picnik

There are some widely-used extensions on the list, such as ScribeFire (formerly performancing), Split Browser, Session Manager and Google Notebook, but there are some that aren't so well known, like Picnik, DocuFarm, Deepest Sender, and Tabinta. Once installed, these extensions greatly help the organization and communication of information.

Are there other extensions that should have made this list from lifehack.org? What are the best extensions that make blogging easier, fun, or enjoyable for you?