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4 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Platforms: Mac OS
4 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Platforms: Mac OS
Introduction All Macs have built-in screen capture ability. By that, I mean, at just about any time, you can "take a picture" of your screen. Pressing Command + Shift + 3 will capture your entire screen and store it on your hard drive as Picture 1, Picture 2, etc. in PICT format. Command + Shift + 4 does the same thing except it allows you to take pictures of just a selected part of the screen. Snapz Pro 2 and Screen Catcher seek to improve the art of taking screenshots by offering more features and convenience than the system's built-in capabilities. I'll be looking at these two programs and making the occasional comparison to the built-in utility as well.
Setting Up Snapz Pro 2 and Screen Catcher are both shareware tools that can be downloaded from their respective websites. Snapz Pro 2 has a 30-day trial period, but starts sending annoying messages on startup after 15 days. Screen Catcher's trial period is 15 days, and it prints "Taken with an unregistered copy of Screen Catcher" on all of its pictures after that.
Both programs were very easy to install. Snapz Pro 2 installs a system control panel, while Screen Cather installs a system extension and application. Both required a restart. Unfortunately, Snapz Pro 2 has a conflict with the Logitech mouse software. As you can see by the message to the right, the problem and solution are both rather simple and can be fixed quite easily. However, it is always disappointing to see a problem message pop up. On the positive side, the problem did not result in any erratic behavior and the software was nice enough to not only tell me about the problem, but how to fix it as well.
Taking Pictures Snapz Pro 2 and Screen Catcher can both take full screen pictures like the built in screenshot utility, but they also give you several other options. By default, Snapz Pro 2 is activated by pressing Command + Shift + 3, and that overrides the system's built-in screenshot utility. I found the default setting was great because I was already used to it, but the hot keys are customizable if you want to keep the functionality of the built-in utility.
When you activate Snapz Pro 2, a window pops up giving you several choices: whether to capture the entire screen, a single window, a menu, or a selection. You can also pick a file format, a save location, scale and more. Snapz Pro 2 can also record movies if you have QuickTime installed on your computer.
Screen Catcher works differently. Instead of having one keystroke that opens a menu by default, it has a different keystroke for each different feature: Catch Region, Catch Window, Catch-All, Catch Screen, and Repeat Last. The defaults were Command + Shift + 3 through Cmd + Shift + 7 , but could easily be changed by opening the Screen Catcher application (picture shown right). However, Screen Catcher does have a rather hidden feature much like Snapz Pro 2. Pressing Cmd + Option + Control and click will bring a popup menu with options for what type of screenshot you want. Screen Catcher also overrides the system's built in utility if you press Cmd + Shift + 3. However, if you also have Snapz Pro 2 installed, it will override Screen Capture if they share a key command.
Comparisons I liked the menu interface of Snapz Pro 2 because I had trouble remembering what key did what when trying to use Screen Catcher. As for what to do with the images that you've already taken, both programs give you several options. Saving in a specific folder, to the clipboard, to the printer are common to both. Screen Catcher also allows you to open the image in a separate window. For taking actual pictures, both programs allowed me to take pictures of the full screen, a window, or a rectangular selection. Window and rectangular selection were both very useful, because I could take what I needed without having to go back and crop the pictures later. Full screen and rectangular (available with Cmd + Shift + 4) was no different than what the system's built-in utility does, but, since both of these programs override them, it is good that the abilities are there. Both programs also allowed me to take pictures with or without the mouse cursor showing.
Snapz Pro 2 does have two features that Screen Catcher doesn't have. Snapz can record a movie and it can take a screenshot of a menu. I don't use this feature too often, but it comes in handy when demonstrating how to do a task involving a menu. Unfortunately, I ran into trouble using this feature in cases where submenus would spawn off of the regular menus. I that case, the submenus weren't shown in the picture. The movie capability is something that I imagine will be a strong selling point of the software. Snapz Pro 2 allows you to adjust the frame rate, compression quality and codec, camera position (fixed, following the cursor, or smooth pan), audio input and more. If you need to record a "how to" clip for someone, this is a great way to do it. Screen Catcher doesn't want to be out done, so they have a really cool feature called Catch-All. What Catch-All does is take pictures while scrolling through a large document (like a web page) and put them all together into one picture. I was very impressed by this feature, but, after a couple times using it and saying "oh cool" to myself, I haven't found myself using it much. For those of you who are tired of pasting screenshots together, this is a great solution. Another Screen Catcher feature is the "Send Email" option in which you can automatically create a new message in your email client with the screenshot attached. Currently supported clients are Eudora, Outlook Express, Entourage, MailSmith, Emailer, and PowerMail.
Drawbacks Neither of these programs is perfect, and they both lacked some features I've been waiting to see in a screenshot utility. Neither program could take pictures of full-screen video playback, such as DVD or QuickTime, and they couldn't take pictures of 3D hardware-accelerated computer games either. Fortunately, most 3D games have their own screenshot feature built in, and you can take pictures of QuickTime movies if they're in a window (Update: Snapz Pro actually can capture from a 3D game, except with a 3dfx video card.). Unfortunately, taking a picture of a DVD just shows black, whether it's in a window or full-screen. (The Motion Picture Entertainment Group is probably happy about that.) I was disappointed because I thought it would be great to make desktop pictures out of DVDs, but the obstacle probably has something to do with how Apple's DVD player works.
Conclusion If you need to take lots of screenshots, you can't go wrong with either program. Both programs earned identical ratings of 4 out of 5 smileys because they both lacked features the other had, so neither was perfect. I liked the interface of Snapz Pro 2 more, and the ability to record movies of things on your screen is awesome. Screen Catcher's appealing features were the lower price tag and the Catch-All feature. I would suggest trying them both out and deciding which one is better for your needs and budget.
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