Five-mouse screenshot 'camera' Creator: Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Shareware: $20
NOTE: Since writing the review, Snapz Pro has evolved into Snapz Pro 2. The newer version includes, among other enhancements, the ability to capture QuickTime files. It's priced at $40 ($20 upgrade to current Snapz Pro registrants). A review will follow as time permits.
I'll bet that nearly every Mac user has sometime invoked the Command-Option-3 keystroke to take a screen snapshot. Apple's key combo works OK for the occasional screen capture, but it's a toss-away camera compared to Snapz Pro.
Snapz Pro is more like a full-featured SLR camera, allowing you to 'photograph' your entire screen, a selection, a window, or a menu in a variety of formats.
Let's say, for example, you have a website photo that you want to capture in JPEG. No problem. In fact, you can capture the JPEG in low, medium, or high resolution and you can specify whether you want to print it, save it to your clipboard, or tuck it into a folder of choice.
Besides JPEG, you can choose from PICT and compressed GIF and, with GIF, you have the option of interleaving for web use. There's more. You can scale your screen shot from 10% to 400% (images are anti-aliased so they're not jagged) and you can select from among five color options: b/w, grayscale, 256-color system palette, Windows palette, and thousands of colors.
You have the option of naming any file you capture so that you can quickly access the picture later on. And, although having nothing to do with productivity, you'll like the pleasant ka-chunk of the 'shutter' as you take your screen shot.
Is Snapz Pro for you? It depends. I use it often; for example, I captured most of the illustrations for my reviews with Snapz Pro. It wouldn't be possible with Apple's bare-boned screen-capture device.
The Ambrosia Software folks have produced an elegant piece of high-quality shareware that costs about the same as a few rolls of 35mm film. The current version is fully functional with System 7 through OS-8.6; it uses only 270K of hard drive space and a meager 50k of ram. You'll find the documentation clearly written and well-illustrated, as professionally done as the software itself.
