Help me improve Snagit…
In my humble opinion (but running this blog, perhaps a little biased) Snagit is as good as software can be. And I know many readers agree. But as someone once said, there is always room for improvement. That’s why I am curious as to what you would like to add if/when Snagit 9.0 is released.
I will send all comments to the Snagit development team so please include any additions to Snagit that you have thought about, are missing, you would like to add and so on. Please pour your heart out in the comment section below!
If you have colleagues, friends and family using Snagit, please ask them to put in their 5 cents here too.
The popular cliché “think outside the box” is perhaps true, but sometimes it’s easier to “think inside the box” so here is a basic breakdown of areas/functions you may have ideas about or want to change:
- Graphic interface. Is it easy to use, could it be improved, perhaps a complete new layout? Do you have any other software products that you think has a great layout that Snagit could benefit from looking at and so on. Share your ideas.
- Capture functionality. Are there any capture modes you feel are missing? Could there be other changes to the capture functionality. Is it easy enough to set up new capture profiles and so on?
- Editing functionality. What about editing your screen captures, do you use the Snagit Editor, what should be changed in the editor?
- Sharing functionality. Like to share your images with others, if so – how?
- Add-ons. Any software you would like to have an output available directly from inside Snagit.
- Other areas. Any other areas that you feel improvements would be helpful.
OK, I’ll go first…
Here are a few of the things I would like to see improved.
About the interface
I like the Snagit 8 interface, but I would like the software to remember my favorite profiles and steps I have taken to create a profile.
For example when doing screen captures for my blogs I often like to decrease the file size to 75%, set up a shadow and save it in png. After I have done this a couple of times perhaps the software can ask if I would like to make this a Capture Profile.
Editing Functionality
I dream of when will Snagit incorporate layers. If you have done any work with Photoshop you know what I mean. Let’s say you have worked with adding elements to your image, perhaps Text, Stamps or Callouts and you would like to remove one of the elements that you included earlier. Now you can choose to step back in the editor and remove everything that you added until you have backed all the way up to the element that you want to remove.
It would be lovely just being able to click on the element you wish to remove and remove it.
More Snagit Editor improvements
I work a lot with the editor and I love the new glassy callouts and similar effects released in I believe Snagit 8.2. It would be great to have more shadow and “button” effects could be added to the editor.
If you have looked at the effects in SmartDraw you know what I mean. The Image here show the SmartDraw shadow effects. Check out SmartDraw 2008.
Another great edit feature would be if I could save a number of steps when editing and perform them as one function. Kind of like the Capture profiles, but in a specific order.
So now it’s your turn, please comment below and let us know what improvements you are looking for.
Talk to you soon 
Peter – Your Snagit Guide
No related posts.
I am working on the company website. I want to snag a web page, change the text within the page then print for review by the owners before requesting the changes from our website producer. I don’t want to add a text box, just simply change the wording on the actual page. Is this an option that I have missed or something that can be added to the update. I don’t like the use of text boxes.
I almost forgot. I used Snagit at my last place of employment. Loved it so much that I had Fab Weld LLC. purchase it for my use here.
I agree with a couple of comments above. A MAC version is a must. I use Grab but it is so limited. The other item needed is options for saving sharper images.
The addition of video capture would also be nice.
Several recommendations:
1) Change the size of the ‘Taking Your Capture’ window by either removing the help-text or increasing the size of the crosshair region (height and width). This would allow for a more precise capture in corners of extended images that fall above/below or right/left, instead of having to edit the image immediately afterword; i.e., a clean shot at initial capture. Presently, during some screen shots, the capture/cross-hair window focuses on a section that is just out of view, leaving the user unsure if a boundary or item on the screen was in the corner.
2) Add more than one iteration of the SnagIt Editor. This would allow easier edits between active images. Presently, with only the single Editor window capability I’m having to paste my editing images into the Capture window, when another instance of the Editor would suffice. This would make editing multiple images of the same subject or screen less time-consuming.
3) Fix the Scrolling Window feature. It is not consistent, perhaps incorporating the arrow keys to get it going, instead of the strict mouse constraints. presently, it either errors out or doesn’t want to stop once it goes, and then it gets lost in alphabet heaven (the Davy Jones Locker for programs…they never come back and give you what you started with).
…a comment about an entry I saw in the list, about DOS sessions. The DOS sessions work just fine…just use the DOS-shell. This works well for the Linux and text-based screens. One drawback is the precison of the capture, i.e., getting the corners just right (see comment 1 above).
Additionally, add an frame or picture frame option into borders when editing images; perhaps with textures. This would be just as valuable as the 3D border option, which would be helpful with web images that could use a border of some type, instead of having to do multiple edits on an image with other programs.
Same comment all the other Mac users:love your program but desperately need a Mac version.
I use Snagit all day long at work but when I get home, I am lost without it. I have not found any program for the Mac that comes even close to what Snagit does.
Would like ability to control left-right or up-down scrolling with keyboard while using mouse to indicate capture area. Similar to existing scrolling for web page, but with more control.
Also would like to have scrolling capability during capture of other apps (e.g. a spreadsheet).
My wishlist of Snagit 9 addon features:
1.Lite version of Camtasia Studio especially in capturing video with sound feature.
2.Selectable resolution capturing capability.
3.Translation/conversion capability i.e. Djavu/Image/Lit file to PDF.
Thank you.
Without asking for the impossible I am pleased with Snagit. I have not used it as much as I plan to now so perhaps I may have more usefull suggestions in the near future. I find it user friendly for my purposes
Currently Snag it works for me and it is great at what it does. Personally I would be careful in how you load up the program with too many features and lose sight of its core value.
I love your program and the value to price is perfect. Great job!!!!
Currently, you are unable to use the “discard identical captures” function of the capture timer when you add a caption to your capture.
I read over the current proposals and cannot think of anything else to add. Some of the ones already mentioned such as being able to change the back ground to transparent and to be able to resize SnagIt files & have them resize as clean as the original capture would be great.
Thanks
Actually, I managed to think of something that I would like to do in Snagit. Is it possible to create the text in say a text editor, and then copy/cut and paste that into a Snagit capture’s text box?
I get notes in emails which I would like to add to the capture.
Best improvement you could make for Snag-IT would be to port to the Mac platform…
I’ve abandoned Windows completely and am dismayed that there is no Mac equivalent…sure there are screen capture programs for the Mac but NONE with the featureset and ease-of-use that I’ve come to take for granted with Snag-IT.
Good luck
We’ve just moved to Macs, so Snag It for Mac would be great. Saw it on the list any updates?
I am swamped and have not had time to go to the Development site but I would say this. I have tested SEVERAL other products which were supposedly “top rate” and they were OK but I have not found this product lacking for anything.
It is well known in the Development & support community and well received. Most folks I know of either own (or wish they owned) this product. It is well thought out and well conceived and performs as expected.
Maybe I don’t know how to operate Snagit properly but if I output to e-mail and do not know the e-mail address of whom I wish to send the snagit picture to I have a problem un less I have written down the e-mail address .
Software that reduces stress & allows for a more enjoyable lifestyle.Very Best Wishes
I am a principal in an architectural firm that relies heavily on collaboration via web sites. We currently are forced (we as in our office and client base) to use Adobe Acrobat PDF and their mark up tools are very poor compared to Snag It.
I would like to move everybody into using snag it for these mark up reviews. My wish. To open PDF files in snag it, to have a pricing structure that I can have all my clients use snag it for reviews.
Snagit really meets all of my needs, and is definitely one of my favorite tools, but one thing I was just thinking about yesterday was a method to pre-define a crop size. Suppose I wanted to crop a rectangle area from 10 different screen shots, and wanted them to be cut in the same exact size (say to fit them together in a new image). So, instead of using the pointer to create the boundaries to snag, you would use the pointer to place the pre-set range on top of an image. This would be applicable to just Region snag’ing I assume.
I tell people that Snagit is the best software for the price, I use every day!
There is only one request I would make, and that is to allow the user to rotate text, ideally a freeform tool to rotate at any angle, but perhaps another option in the text dialog window to specify common angles (90 as default).
Not sure if it can be done but if snag-it had a corner rounding function that would be very useful to us.
I wish that Snagit would snag stuff out of PDF files. Text in one snag and graphics in another one.
How about ‘independent’ horizontal & vertical lines to act as guides during Perspective & Shear operations on captured images of buildings.
I am a recent convert from XP to OSX Leopard, and and 98% satisfied with my decision to drop windows. My only negative experience so far, has been the fact that there is no comparable application that can compete in screen capturing with Snag It. From scrolling regions to “complete page” captures, you just can’t beat it. When can we expect a mac version of this MOST USEFUL software?
I’d like;
– Invert mask (mark an area, invert the mask to exclude it)
– An output to the Outlook 2007 Message Editor, it’s not Word (but it is) so the Word one doesn’t work.
When capturing using “Auto Scroll Window”:
It Scrolls from Top to Bottom. Great!
But doesn’t scroll Left to Right.
An Example of requiring Left to Right plus Top to bottom is when doing:
“MS Windows – Run/msconfig”
The configuration window is so narrow that it is difficult to comprehend the information at hand.
Windows XP is tolerable but Windows Vista has twice as much info per horizontal line.
Impossible to comprehend.
It would be great if Snagit could capture the full width plus top to bottom which would allow reading each full line.
Hugh
I do not know if my way at looking what a Snagit system should be is correct.
I purchased on Snagit from you so time back.
I have not really worked it I just covered my immediate need.
I under stand that you try to cover all the ways that you can envision that a user would be looking for.
Speaking for my self, this is what would be the best for me.
1/ Working on a WORD documents, Photo Shop and XL
2/ Need picture or a block of text from an other document located on the net or in any of my files.
3/ I will bring up the host document.
4/ I will activate the Snagit program by clicking on its logo located in edge of the screen.
5/ My screen only shows just my document and a small indicator at the edge telling me that Snagit is ready to act.
6/ Clicking on that indicator changes my cursor to an arrow.
7/ Using it, I would snag the text, or picture, to be moved to a holding place or directly on to my document.
8/ Now I should be able to size and rotate the image before it becomes part of my document.
My lack of computer skills are plane and clear.
I get very confused with all that comes on to the screen, color shapes etc are confusing. What you have is most likely what most skilled computer users like and needs.
If the snagit also could act as an eraser. Snag an area and then remove it using point by point lassoing the area on interest.
You most likely have all the mentions features in the current Snagit. if so I apologize.
I use computers as tools.
everything just works fine for me except a the shadow effect.
I would want a shadow effect across all the edges of the snapshot taken with snagit9 which is not possible this time with snagit8.
Snagit is an absolutely awesome product.. I have been using it on both my
work and home computer for a long time .. and in terms of my job-related
presentations, it is an indispensable tool….
Some suggestions for Release 9 are:
• can the background be changed from black to some other lighter color (just
like Office 2007 offers silver and blue)
• can the overall font size of the GUI be changed. I realize that so many of
these new products are made for the wide-screen, larger monitors, but they
are quite an eyeful for a regular 15 inch laptop
• Stamps – how about flags and country shapes?
Keep up the great work at Techsmith!
I’ve posted this request elsewhere, but I’ll repeat it here if you don’t mind.
I dearly wish SnagIt would be able to capture a circular image and then let me work with it as a CIRCLE, not as a circle within a rectangular capture box. Since the product already has the capability to let me draw a perect circle around something on the screen and capture it, why can’t I work with it AS a circle, not a circle within a box? If SnagIt added this feature, I could easily create buttons with beveling, shading, etc., without having to do any cumbersome cropping.
Thank you for a great product.
Without going through all the comments, here’s my take on why I’m *NOT* upgrading to version 9:
- The *one* feature I miss most on SnagIt is being able to “work with layers”; not necessarily with “layers” as in “Photoshop (TM) layers”, but being able to add/remove selections and re-do a blur with a bit more/less of the snapshot being blurred. Currently, something as simple as selecting “undo” after doing a blur with multiple selections will even clear the selections and I have to start all over again… I’ll keep skipping upgrades until I can do some *serious* and improved edits: everything else v 8.2 does as good as I need…
- I absolutely and positively *hate* the “stack on the left side” of SnagIt 9! I work from left to right and having the “first” screenshots on the right messes up my workflow, so I’ll either have to do one screen at a time as in v 8.x or keep re-arranging the snapshots, neither of which is worth the upgrade no matter how cheap.
Just my 0.02 worth!
I would like to second Scott’s request for rotating text. I LOVE SnagIt and would have upgraded from Ver. 8 if it had included rotating text. Maybe in 9.1?????
The ability to remove the SnagIt icon from the context menu in Explorer.
SnagIt needs an OCR engine so when we capture text from a non-text window then it uses OCR to recognize the characters. That will be really useful.
I Love SnagIt!!!
Kodak Easy Share (which is free) has the functionalty, that you can click on a grey area, and it removes the bad incidence of light on photos. I would love to see that functionalty in Snag It.
What I really miss are the key shortcuts. With version 9 you can only go 2 steps deep.
But it is still a great product.
Love SnagIt and have replaced TNT with it (mostly). Only thing that irritates me is that the OneClick popup menu seems a little unreliable. It quietly sits at the edge of the screen most of the time but, over the course of the day, seems to get ‘lost’ under other open windows. So, when I need it most, it’s not there until I start closing or minimising windows. If it could be more reliable, that would be good.
It would also be useful to be able to take a screen shot from within the editor. A drop down with the same options as OneClick that caused the editor to minimise and a screen shot to be taken would allow me to concentrate on the editor rather than the sometimes-there popup menu.
Still a terrific product. Oh yes, and I don’t particularly want a MAC version. (Joking!)
Don’t know if this has been mentioned, but I’d like to be able to edit and delete the default “Styles”.
Sure, I can add “Quick Styles”, but I’m basically lazy. I’d rather pick from the first row of styles rather than having to navigate all the way down to the bottom of the styles list to see my favorites.
Otherwise, this continues to be the best utility I’ve ever used! At least 20 other people are using SnagIt based on my recommendation.
When I embed SnagIt screen captures in an email, the text is unreadable and the images hardly recognizable. However, if I do a regular copy / paste I don’t have such a problem. Bottom line — SnagIt is useless for such email embeds. Need a way to improve the readablity of screen captures.
I’d like to see a profile or a way to capture a window/screen with a scrolling menu. Many times I need to capture a screen shot of software that contains a drop down menu and I need to have the ability to have that scroll and capture the entire contents of the drop down menu while still capturing the window behind it.
Unless I’m missing a way to already do this…I’ve searched and tried various ways.
I’d like to be able to have the ability to macro or automate some steps. I’ll often generate a screenshot, mark it up and then I flatten the objects so I can shrink it to 75%. If I could have a button to flatten and then shrink to 75% that would save me clicks.
A way to save all the captured images to a folder. I’m loosing my image if I close the (internal) window in the editor.
Integration with SAP R/3.
I would like to see a version where Snag-it could be used from a flash drive. Thanks
Would like more keyboard shorts. Specially one to save to a previously set up default format and folder. Automatic numbering to that folder would be great too. The Program Preferences>Options don’t seem to give access to these kind of semi-permanent changes.
Otherwise I love it!
For some reason when I do a copy from Snag-It9 and try to paste it in an AOL email it does not give me a paste option. Help?
Thank you.=
As others have said, we need the ability edit the default styles. I also think there is mismatch of screen real estate used on the default styles vs their functionality.
For example: Snagit9 have 6 large box pictures of styles I do not want. As a result, I have some bad choices.
I have to PAY ATTENTION and to to the VERY SMALL drop down arrow to see my options. I have to scroll through shapes I do not want to see. Then I again need to PAT ATTENTION and hit TWO LITTLE boxes to set my color to the option I picked from the drop down. This is far slower than snagi8 8, because in 8 I could at least select my default shape and the color would be retained from my last use.
What I need is the options to:
1.Set a top row of default shapes and colors.
2.Allow me to change the default colors of all the remaining drop down shapes.
Again, a for instance. Your current default colors may work ok on light backgrounds. They do NOT work well on dark backgrounds: Stock charts for example that often use black. For a dark background I want a BRIGHT red or green or yellow. With snagit 9 (WHICH I LOVE! ESPECIALLY THE MULTIPLE AUTOMATIC SAVE BAR BELOW.) I now have to CHANGE EVERY drawing object EVERY TIME I use it, once to access it, then again to color it.
Maybe these features are already there and I just do not know how to set them.
thank you for a most wonderful product.
and for other readers, my most favorite utilities are
Snagit-to save, edit (into icons too) and share screenshots
Kavoom-a multi monitor software kv switch
the 1995 Norton filemanager that still works, even with vista. It is FAST.
Anyplace Control-to trouble shoot other computers in the house.
We need to option to have Snagit save it’s data base files on a different drive or partition. For those of use who want to keep our C:\ drive small. As it is now all the files are saved at c:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\TechSmith\SnagIt\DataStore6E729B0-D90C-4127-BB6E-38AE79647955.SNAG
I would like to be able to repeatedly take the same snapshot of a changing screen by a single click or key.
Its a bit like having a camera on a tripod with a remote ‘capture’ button – it snags the same scene again when I determine that it had changed.
Webinars with power point slides are a great example of the need. I would like to select the region/window to snag and when it changes I want to take another snapshot without having to laboriously select the region/window again.
A neat option is if SnagIt could auto-detect when a region has changed then snag automatically.
At the end, my gallery would have all the screen captures neatly arranged and ready to be further processed.
I would like to see a tool that turns your pointer back to an ordinary pointer after you have used a tool on the Draw canvas.
It would be nice to see a more modern appearance for the utility also.
It would be nice to have the option to save the catalogue content to a memory stick or other location.
Lots more stamps please………
Better quality video would be great!
SnagIt 9 is a solid step forward with the Captures Tray, Keywords and Tags etc etc. But English is not my mother tongue, so I would like to edit/change the Tags’ names, and also their icons. I can add any keyword from any language, hence the Tags should be able to edit and to add some more – like you can do with Categories in Outlook 2007.
Thanks for a great product.