In 2005, I had my first chance to review SnagIt, a screen capture utility that at the time put Microsoft's screen capture to shame. Since then, I have asked my company to license it for use by our entire staff, and have even gone so far as to call SnagIt the most useful application on my system.

Now SnagIt is in version 11, and I say the same things -- with even more emphasis than in earlier days.

While other software packages have had problems under the weight of lots of unnecessary features, or just didn't keep up with the times, the developers at TechSmith have done a great job making SnagIt relevant and useful for many tasks.

In its simplest form, SnagIt captures screens. Call it up and click on the big red capture button -- or use the SnagIt capture hot-keys -- and you have a duplicate of your screen that you can revise, e-mail or save. Microsoft Windows can do that with the Print-Screen button, but beyond that SnagIt runs circles around Print-Screen.

For one, SnagIt can let you choose whether to capture the entire screen, a window or a portion of a window. It can let you pick it out by designating the opposing corners of the area you want to capture; or let you capture a specific graphic, tool bar or other item on the screen.

You can tell it whether you want to see the cursor in your finished shot, and whether it should capture the hotspots on the capture so you can click on them to launch new webpages -- all really cool. And it can even let you drop down a list or menu and capture that -- which is very helpful when you want to send somebody an illustration of how to do something on their own system.

A couple versions ago the user interface was substantially changed, which at the time I thought was a step backward, because it complicated what was previously a drop-dead simple application. With SnagIt 10, TechSmith introduced a new feature that brought back the simplicity beyond where it had been. They call it all-in-one. With all-in-one capture, the software gives you hints while you're capturing as to the best way to do it -- instead of having to first set up parameters or choose the type of capture beforehand. It is once again drop-dead simple.

As in previous versions, SnagIt can create an image of an entire webpage -- even when you can't see the whole webpage on the screen. With all-in-one capture, you can tell it which hidden parts of the page you want to include -- everything off the right side of your monitor, everything below the bottom or both.

I occasionally want a printed listing of files that I have in a particular folder. I simply show that folder on my screen and set SnagIt to capture text instead of images (something you can't do with all-in-one). In moments I have a complete file listing ready for printing -- something that Windows should do, but has never been able.

Add to the advanced capture features a nice set of editing tools in SnagIt Editor (which comes bundled), and you have a complete capture solution for just $50. There's a free trial available at SnagIt.com.

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