Screen capture utilities

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I’ve been pretty happy with Snagit for a few years, but today I noticed in the Paint.net 3.31 update notes that they seem to really like Window Clippings.

What do you guys use and why do you like it? The one thing I dislike about Snagit is the fact that you can’t have multiple project files open in Snagit Editor, but that’s not enough reason for me to jump ship. I just happen to like Paint.net a lot and would expect them to use and integrate with the best.

2

What are you using it for? Do you need to do DirectX captures? I used to use HyperSnap, but that was a while ago and I don’t what other tools are be available now.

  • Alan
3

Not currently, no. Mainly just help documentation (usually living on web pages). Like you, I don’t need to use this type of software as much these days. But when I do, I always find myself wishing I could do the majority of my editing with one tool instead of two (or at least a better integrated pair). Snagit Editor is a little faster and sometimes more convenient, but Paint.net offers more features.

Hypersnap looks interesting and seems to have a few things Snagit lacks.

4

I love Cropper. It’s incredibly quick and easy to use for the sort of thing you’re trying to do.

5

I’ve used many, and Hypersnap DX is my all time favorite:

http://www.hyperionics.com/

6

Gadwin Printscreen. Free. Simple. Plenty of options.

7

Thanks for the recommendations, guys. So far it looks like the featuresets are pretty comparable to Snagit, unless I missed something. But I’m big on having the right tools and will continue to evaluating the alternatives.

Snagit must have been monitoring this thread, because just the other day they released version 9. Now Snagit Editor lets you manage multiple screen captures in a tab system of sorts, and seems to work beautifully.

This is great because it means I can use the editor more often now. I rely on certain features that appear to be missing in other simple utilities, such as treating certain elements of the image as individual objects rather than just layers. Until now, the only other tool I had that could do that seemed to be Visio, which I use less these days for various reasons. Photoshop is another option, but I prefer to avoid it for this particular job because it feels slower and overkill. This functionality is great for things like help docs that just need arrows and text moved around periodically as the docs get updated.

8

Hypersnap DX.

9

Since I do my editing in the GIMP, I just use its screen- & windowgrabber. Then I can crop it right there.