As far as useful programs go, I would have to say that the screen capture program "Snagit" by Techsmith ranks right near the top.

As a webmaster I find myself using it several times a week. As a matter of fact I used it several times putting together this article.

The program helps me capture screen images for a wide variety of uses such as:

• Web Pages
• Graphics in Ebooks I produce
• Screen shots in online videos

I have used a variety of other screen capture programs, but have not found any that do the job as well as Snagit.

Snagit offers a 30 day trial which you should try out. Once you get going with it, you will most likely agree that the $39.95 is a more than fair price for this powerful little program.

Brief Overview

You can either keep Snagit as a stand alone program or integrate it right into your web browser. I prefer to keep it right in my web browser so that it is hand at all times.

Or you can keep it as a standalone program which will look like this:

Once you start the program, you tell it what part of the screen you would like to capture the image from. You options include:

• The whole screen
• Current Window
• Window with it automatically scrolling to capture all of the information
• Particular Region
• Just one object on the screen

Adding Effects
After capturing the graphic, you can add effects to it. This includes adding edge effects or text bubble annotations for example.

Some of the edge effects available with Snagit

I created a short video to give you a quick glimpse at the program. This will help you get a feel for it. Click the word "Next" below to view the 1.6mb Flash video on Snagit.

You can download Snagit here.