TechSmith has announced a public beta of Snagit for Mac, its screen capture software that was previously only available in Windows form. Since creating a screenshot is no great challenge in OS X—Command-Shift-3 will do the trick—why turn to a third-party program like Snagit? Because the application smoothly handles a number of tasks, including grabbing just one window, a portion of the screen, or a single menu as well as annotating screen images. What’s more, Snagit allows flexible sharing of screenshots.
After you’ve installed Snagit, a little drawer nestles itself on the right side of your screen. You pull it out to perform a capture. That’s when the fun begins. You grab the handles of a resizable window to select all or a portion of the screen. Snagit then presents you with an editable image.
From there, you’ve got a number of useful features at your disposal. You can add text, arrows, bubbles, and color fill; you can even blur out a section (if it contains an image or some text you don’t want to share). There are a host of other tools suited for dealing with screen images, though what you find here doesn’t compare with a full image-editing application like Photoshop.
TechSmith has long had a well-known Windows version of Snagit, and it has also recently released the powerful screen recording application, Camtasia for Mac. Snagit enters a crowded Mac field of screen capture software with strong competition from Acorn 2, Snapz Pro, and ScreenFlow 2.
Snagit is only still a beta, so you may encounter bugs, and new features may still be on the way. The effects pane is currently empty and labeled with a “coming soon” message. TechSmith says it will update the beta every 30 to 60 days based on user feedback.
Available for free, Snagit for Mac beta requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.1.