Review: Snapz Pro X 2.5.1 screen capture program is past its prime
At one time or another, almost everybody has the need to capture your screen. You might be asked by a tech support representative to grab a screenshot to help diagnose a software problem, or you may just want to save and share an amusing part of a Web page or Facebook post.
For the occasional user, Apple provides two free screen capture methods. The first, keyboard commands to capture the whole screen (Command-Shift-3) and a selected portion of the screen (Command-Shift-4), saving the images to a file, have been present in every version of Mac OS since 1984. The second is the Grab application (in /Applications/Utilities), which was introduced with Mac OS X. Both of these methods work reasonably well, but each has its own quirks and drawbacks for people who need to shoot a lot of screenshots, leading to the rise of many apps that provide additional features and convenience.
Ambrosia Software’s Snapz Pro X was among the first, tracing its lineage back to 1996, garnering many passionate users down the years; I’m one of them (it also won a Macworld Editor’s Choice Award in 2004). But Snapz (I’m shortening the name from here on for convenience) hasn’t aged well, hasn’t kept up with the times, and is no longer the best choice, in terms of features or in value.
Grab some pixels
Start Your Capture: Snapz Pro X’s capture palette allows you to choose your capture type and the destination of the image.
You begin a screen capture in Snapz by pressing a user-designated hotkey or choosing the program’s icon in your Applications folder. The screen freezes and the program’s main window pops up, allowing you to choose from the four capture types. Screen captures the entire screen, or whatever screen you choose if you have multiple monitors. Objects captures the contents of any open window, even if the window is partially obscured. You can select multiple objects in a single capture. You can also select the menu bar, but not menus. The Selection capture type gives you crosshairs to select a portion of the screen; this is also the capture type you use to shoot menus (older versions of Snapz captured menus more cleanly using the Objects capture type, so this is a regression in the current version). Finally, the Movie capture type allows you to select a portion of your screen to record video and optionally two audio tracks: the system audio and a microphone track.
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