Screen Capture for Mac OS X

I don’t often look at Mac software.  However, today I was helping someone try to find the equivelent of Snagit for the Mac.  Here is what we found:

  1. First is Snagit.  Yes, they are considering a mac version.  Other info here.  This would be great.  The latest release of Snagit has kind of a messy UI, but in general it gets the job done and then some.  I use it all the time.
  2. Next was SnapZPro.  It looks more geared towards video.  I couldn’t find the part where I could add an arrow and annotate a screen capture.
  3. We looked at InstantShot.  It was simple and easy to use, but it was TOO simple without enough features.  Snagit has the ability to annotate and change effects, sizes, everything.  This had virtuall nothing.
  4. Snagit actually has this project called Jing.  This wasn’t bad.  It had the bare bones of annotation and a built in FTP.  Plus it worked on Windows and Mac.  Nice UI.
  5. FInally, we found Skitch.  Skitch is similar to Jing but it had more features for the annoation.  It also had FTP built in.  The UI is nice.  I love how things “flip” on the Mac.  We decided to go with Skitch.

There might be more out there, but this list gave us a quick overview of the tools out there.  I love looking at alternative software for the same task.  It’s amazing to me how many different approaches there are.

5 replies on “Screen Capture for Mac OS X”

For application screenshots for documentation you need annotation, bubble call outs, zoom, resize, arrows, text and built in ftp. (Just to name a few). Snagit does all this and more. Grab just doesn’t do it.

thanks for this article – i have been looking for a snagit alternative for ages – skitch is the answer – thanks alot!

I was searching for an image capture application and on MacUpdate found this new post – Voila 0.1b. I downloaded and found that it captures any shape like circle, polygon, free hand, menu. It has lot of annotation options like text, arrows, call outs, shapes, crop, zoom. Also some good effects to add to the capture. Seems to be a very good alternative for my MacBook.

Good to know these screen capture tools and thanks for the sharing. I always use acethinker screen grabber to capture screenshot on my macbook pro, free and works fairly well. Share it here as an alternative.

Whatya think?