Techsmith, the makers of applications including Jing (recently covered by Doriano), Camtasia and Snagit for Windows recently launched Snagit for Mac beta, the Mac version of its popular screen capture application that is pretty much a standard in the Windows technical writing community. This new beta requires an Intel Mac running OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard.

After you install and it place it on your dock, you can access it from the right side of your desktop and from your Mac toolbar. It offers the following capture options:

• All-in-One Capture for capturing the entire screen, a region, window, or scrolling window. This capture mode works differently than some other capture apps I’ve used previously, so I recommend testing it out for yourself prior to using it on a real project for the first time. It took me a couple of tries to get used to this mode.
• Window Capture for capturing an application or browser window that is hidden behind other open windows or a transparency within an open window. I didn’t see where I would use this capture mode in my own my own work, especially after enjoying the flexibility of the All-in-One Capture mode.

While I did encounter some minor bumps in this beta product, I anticipate Snagit for Mac joining my regular Mac applications lineup because I found it easy to use and quite good performance-wise. I didn’t delve too far into Snagit for Mac’s tools, because I rarely need to add to or modify screen captures, outside of cropping. Effects aren’t yet available in the beta.

With the exception of InstantShot, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed with the state of Mac screen capture options, but Snagit for Mac won me over at the first screenshot with its ease of use and flexibility. I just hope that Snagit for Mac doesn’t go the way of its Windows cousin, which has suffered a good deal of bloat in its later releases.

Have you tried out Snagit for Mac beta? Share your experience below.

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Here are five things that make Aviary screen capture really useful.

1. Choose exactly what you’re capturing. With Aviary, you type in the URL of any web site you want to capture or just add “aviary.com/” to the beginning of the URL in your browser. Aviary offers you the option of choosing the screen resolution and quality of the image you’ll capture, as well as the region of the page. The site also plans to offer to capture sites as they appear in different browsers (very useful for web designers), but that feature is not ready yet. Aviary can capture Flash web sites with no problem.
2. Drop screen caps directly into an editing application. Not all screen caps can be used as-is. Sometimes you have to edit them before you can use them, and Aviary has made that process much easier. As soon as you take a screen cap with Aviary, you can move directly into Aviary’s image-editing applications. There are separate editors for different purposes, such as Phoenix Image Editor, Toucan Color Editor, Peacock Effects Editor and Raven Vector Editor.
3. Save your image online. As long as you have a free Aviary account (which takes less than a minute to create), Aviary will save your image and host it. It will even automatically provide you with embed codes for HTML and forums, as well as sharing tools for social networking. You can add controls on exactly who can see an image with a Pro account.
4. Use Aviary without visiting the site. As long as you use Firefox as your web browser, you can install Talon, Aviary’s Firefox plugin. It will add a button to your toolbar that will allow you to use Aviary’s screen capture tool without constantly needing to go back to Aviary’s site. You can even direct a screen cap into Aviary’s image editing application.
5. Set your screen capture as your desktop. As soon as you’ve captured a web site with the Firefox plugin, you can set that image as your desktop — along with sending it to email, saving it, copying it or even simply viewing it. You can complete similar tasks from the web site, as well, but I’ve found that the plugin significantly speeds up the process.

Aviary provides a simple solution for screen captures, along with image editing. It might not be my first choice for a large design project, but when I just need to get an image into a blog post or saved for future reference, it certainly speeds up the process.

Have you tried Aviary?

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