Review of TechSmith Snagit for Mac

As a blogger you need some image capturing and processing tool to quickly create images for your website. Especially, high quality images helps a lot when you are running a tutorial or how-to site. There are many free and premium software available in market to make the bloggers life easy. And Snagit is one of the easiest and cost effective image processing and screen recording tool from TechSmith Corporation helps to improve the productivity of bloggers significantly. In this article we explain the features and capability of Snagit 2021 for Mac which you can refer before buying.

Related: Brackets code editor review.

Purchasing Snagit for Mac

Earlier days, TechSmith was offering Snagit as an independent app. However, nowadays Snagit is available as a yearly version like Snagit 2022 for macOS. You have to purchase a subscription from their website that comes with a free update and support for one year. You can also purchase a maintenance agreement when purchasing the product so that you can get the next year app for a free.

After purchasing the app, you can go to your account section and download the latest .dmg version available for Mac. You can install the app on your Mac like any other apps. There is also a bundled option to purchase Snagit along with Camtasia video editing software for Mac.

Snagit Pricing

Snagit is available for both Windows and Mac and is offered in three versions.

• Personal and Professional version which costs you around $49.95 for single license. This is a complete version for home and office work.
• Educational version which costs you around $29.95 for single license (50% discount).
• Government version which costs you around $42.95 for single license.

Snagit single license version can be installed on two computers and educational / government versions need verification of qualification by TechSmith Corporation.

Note: The only confusion is that Snagit is also available in Mac App Store which does not comes with maintenance agreement. Therefore, if you purchase through App Store, you need to purchase a new app every year for getting updates. Alternatively, you can get an upgrade from their website by paying a discounted amount. Remember, when a new app is available, TechSmith guys also will delete the previous year app from the App Store. In this situation, we recommend you to purchase through their website so that it is easy to get quick support.

What Can You Do With Snagit for Mac?

You can capture the screen images and videos, edit with useful features and share on social networking sites or save locally to use it anywhere.

Setting Up Preferences

After installing the app, open Snagit and go to “Snagit > Preferences” menu. Here, you can setup how you want to use the app. For example, you can use the quick capture icon from the top bar or use the one click floating tab.

Screen Capturing Features

There are many screen capturing options available to precisely capture the image; here we will focus on the features more useful for bloggers:

• Capture the region, window, active window, menu, object and use scrolling option to capture the full page.
• Capture text from the screen, menu items with time delay and include or exclude cursor on image.
• Select multiple areas on the screen and capture full length webpage with URL.
• Record webcam and screen activities as a video.
• Create video from images and create quick images from templates.

Capturing a Screen

Once the mode of capture is selected as image, you can click on the capture button to get the input as defined. The output of the image can be opened on the editor or kept on the clipboard for further editing. You can set the delay for capture with counter showing the timer so that the menu items or any preparatory steps can be done before capture. Once the image is captured by default it will be opened on Snagit editor, you can change this in settings to save in clipboard as well.

Image Editing

There are numerous options for editing your image on Snagit. On Mac version, all the available options are classified under “Tools” and “Effects” sections.

• Insert a callout with simple text and different callout styles.
• Draw predefined shapes like circle, rectangle, etc.
• Trim, cutout, blur and fill with any colors.
• Draw free hand lines, arrows and highlight the important content on the image.
• Add steps with automatic sequential numbering.
• Add large varieties of stamps.

Saving an Image

You can save the image to one of the available formats – Snagit project file, PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF and GIF. Also you can directly share your images on social networks like Facebook and cloud storage like Dropbox.

Using Templates

The latest Snagit for Mac version comes with updated templates compared to earlier versions. You can use these templates to drag and drop images in the pre-defined placeholder area. You can add captions and create a good looking step by step process for your articles or documents. It is also possible from directly create an image from the clipboard.

The best part is that you can share the Snagit project file to your team member with editable mode. In this manner, multiple colleagues can update a single image before making it as a flattened PNG or JPG image.

Creating Video from Images

Similar to creating image from template, you can create videos from images. This is useful when you want to create instructional video from few captured images.

Other Useful Tips

Free Trial – 15 days

Since the product is being offered for both Windows and Mac, we have noticed there are big differences in functionalities between these versions. Basically Windows version has lot many features while Mac has unique set of features. If you are using both Windows based PC and a Mac then it is a good idea to download the free trial on both platforms and check the suitable product for your need. The free trial ends after 15 days and you can activate the free version with a product key by purchasing the app.

One-Click Tab and Capture Window Icon

One-click tab is a floating widget offering quick tools to capture images and videos. Ensure to enable this feature to improve your productivity.

If you prefer to use the top icon, then you can use the capture window icon.

Using Presets and Themes

Snagit for Mac allows you to setup presets which you can capture image quickly with predefined options. For example, you can setup a border for your image capture and use a shortcut to capture image without hassle. Snagit also comes with basic and urban style themes. You can download other free themes from Snagit for Assets page on their site. You can create your favorite options from multiple themes and create your own custom theme. This will be useful without looking for the different styles in different themes.

Stamps

Stamps are the stock images which can be added on your image to create the needed effects. For example, you can place a map pin or insert a question mark on your image. Since the stamps are high quality images you can also use it with transparent background as an individual image. Download the stamps directly from the Snagit editor or from TechSmith website to include custom stamps on your images.

If you like the stamps, Snagit also offers a complete assets for a premium subscription. You can download high quality premium stamps, themes, templates and royalty free stock images for your website and other projects.

FTP

You can upload all you images directly from Snagit to your website’s server using FTP sharing option. Especially when you are using content management system like WordPress, it will be easy to upload images and retrieve the images directly from the admin dashboard front end.

Mobile Options

TechSmith also offers a mobile app called Fuse which helps to easily transmit media files from your phone to Snagit over Wi-Fi. You can also connect your mobile device to Snagit and record the mobile screen activities seamlessly. There is also a TechSmith Capture App for iOS which you can use to record your iPhone screen. Later, you can share the video to Snagit Mac app and trim the unwanted portions.