SnapzProX
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Snapz Pro upgrades to v2.5, adds Cocoa, Retina support
Snapz Pro X has never been a particularly beautiful application. It is, however, a very handy one. For authors and bloggers, it's been an indispensable tool in terms of screen capture -- letting you get very simple easy-to-tweak results with a minimum of interaction. One of Snapz's key features is its ability to capture a movie from a user-selected portion of the OS X screen, adding optional Mac audio and microphone narration. For static screen shots, it's also multi-screen aware, lets you carefully adjust image framing, select a single window to capture, or choose a pre-set fixed size segment. Ambrosia's 2.5.0 is about to debut any second -- probably by end of business Thursday. This version is a complete ground-up rewrite of Snapz Pro X in Cocoa using modern APIs. You read that right. Seriously, Ambrosia just finally got around to dumping Carbon. It's a welcome update that dedicated users will breathe a sigh of relief to finally download. This update should fix compatibility issues with MacOS X 10.8 (aka "Mountain Lion"), as well as full support for Retina displays. It's not prettier than previous versions but, as I found when participating in the recent Beta program, it's just as effective. Pros: Easy to use, does what you need a tool like this to do. Cons: Soviet-era aesthetics Snapz Pro is a free upgrade for existing Snapz Pro X 2.x users or costs $69 for new purchasers. %Gallery-170967%
Friday Favorite: Snapz Pro X for Mac
I was straining my brain today -- admittedly not a hard thing for me to do -- trying to think of a topic for a Friday Favorite. The answer was right in front of me all the time, since one of the most-used applications on my Macs is Snapz Pro X (US$69) from Ambrosia Software. Snapz Pro X, currently at version 2.1.5, is a deceptively powerful Mac application that hides out of the way until you need it. What does it do? It lets you capture pictures and video of anything on your Mac. For those of us who write for tech blogs, create technical documentation, or write books, Snapz Pro X is a fast way to capture full or partial screens. You press the usual Command-Shift-3 to take a screenshot, and the simple Snapz Pro X user interface appears...
TUAW Faceoff: Screenshot apps on the firing line
Whether you want to post something to a web page or blog, or show off an application element in a presentation, taking quality screenshots is becoming an increasingly common task for lots of different Mac users. Although OS X comes with its own built-in screenshot utility, Grab, and onboard F-keys for the task, there are lots of third-party options as well. Contrary to popular belief, not all screen capture applications are created equal. So what program is the best for taking quality screenshots off of your computer? To find out, I put five screen capture programs through their paces to try to find the "ultimate" screen-capture program. The programs I used: Grab - built into OS X Skitch - free (at least while in beta) Snapz Pro X - $29 for image capture only, $69 for image and motion capture InstantShot! - free QuickSnap - $14.95 Read-on for my analysis and take a look at the gallery for screenshots from each program, as well as head-to-head comparisons. %Gallery-22020%
Making Screencasts
Don McAllister over at ScreenCastsOnline points to this great tutorial for making screencasts on your Mac. Miraz Jordan has a bunch of suggestions for setting up and recording a screencast bringing together a number of tools like Backdrop, Mouseposé , iShowU, and Snapz Pro X, all of which we have mentioned at one time or another. Rather coincidentally I also ran across (via Cocoablogs) this discussion by Peter Hosey of optimizing iShowU for screencasts, but the comments there suggest that Snapz Pro X is able to capture at a higher resolution than iShowU (with the trade off being the time it takes to save the movie when you're finished recording). Unfortunately, though it works with Intel Macs, Snapz Pro X is not universal (unlike the less expensive iShowU). So TUAWers, share your own experiences: what have you found that works particularly well for screencasting? And if you don't have any experience yet, but would like to get some, check out Miraz Jordan's tutorial to learn how to get started.
Snapz Pro updated for Intel Macs
Ambrosia Software has released Snapz Pro X 2.0.3, an Intel Mac-compatible upgrade to its top-notch screen recording app. Other improvements include a tune-up to make Snapz Pro run smoothly on single processor machines, and a fix to ensure control over whether the cursor appears in your recording. I use Snapz Pro almost every day to make static screenshots for TUAW and for print publications, and to make movies of my screen for video podcasts. I love, love, love this program. Sure you can use the built-in screenshot capability in OS X, but Snapz Pro offers much more control over static screenshots and the added bonus of recording movement on your screen. Snapz Pro X 2.0.3 is a free upgrade for registered users of Snapz Pro X 2.0.x. New users pay $29 for the static version and $69 for the movie version.
