Being an entrepreneur, my constant search is for tools to make our work faster and easier.
Since our organization is a people-intensive organization, one of our basic needs was to have a tool to create training videos for our new employees.
We also constantly needed explainer videos made for our clients, and PowerPoint simply wasn’t enough.
Why I love Snagit is because it is much more than intuitive. It is simple. Really simple.
Snagit is built keeping all kinds and levels of computer users in mind. It repeats its most important features and modes more than once so that you have no difficulty finding it.
For example, you can capture an image from the All in one capture, and you can also directly click on the image button from the left panel of the Snagit window. You can go to panoramic capture from the All in one capture mode, from the Presets, and from the dropdown in Selection when you click on Image.
And I just can’t say how much I like this repetitive feature! It is like you just can’t lose your way; it’s not meandering, it’s not tricky.
You can’t say this is tough because the features are right there at every other click. The Techsmith folks have made the tech surrounding video making and creating so easy, it’s unbelievable.
What can Snagit 2021 do?
So now that we know Snagit 2021 is easy, what can it actually do? Who is it for?
Snagit, I believe, would be most useful for professionals, project managers, HR folks, team leads, and entrepreneurs.
Essentially, anyone who deals with onboarding, training the team, explaining work, new ideas, and creating content would be greatly benefitted from Snagit.
The new Snagit 2021 comes as that one handy tool to handle almost all your visual documentation needs and eliminate some of your written stuff. No, I’m not anti to pages and pages of how-to and folders of documents to scan from – I’m simply pro to what’s fast, easy to create, and easier to grasp – videos!
You can use Snagit 2021 for
– Training Videos
– YouTube tutorials
– Short animated Gifs
– To create videos from screenshots
So what does the new Snagit 2021 has that will make a significant portion of your work a cakewalk? Let’s look at the features and get wowed.
SnagIt 2021 Features | Snagit 2021 Review
Screen Recorder with Audio
Record your screen, the full desktop, or just the application window. If you want to add voice specifications, you can use the computer audio to do so.
Snagit 2021 also allows you to switch between using the screen or recording through your webcam. For content creators for YouTube and other video platforms, this is an amazing feature as it helps to add a personal touch to your how-to videos.
Enhanced Capturing
Snagit 2021 has been made such that even a layman in terms of computers can use it with ease. The All-in-one Capture mode, which is the default mode, is specially made to ensure that even a 10-year-old can use it easily.
The default All in one mode, when clicked, opens up a box that has clear, big icons of image, video, and panoramic feature.
If you are not an icons person, you can just take the cursor to the icons, and out pops text guiding you what the icons are for – “Capture an image,” “Record a Video,” “Launch a panoramic capture.”
The All one capture also has clearly marked area selection dimensions in pixels and a redo-selection button. There is also a big cross-it-all button that will discard the Snagit selection.
Below the All in one capture mode, you can find the Image and Video mode separately.
Grab Text Feature
An uber-cool feature – the Grab text lets you grab the text from a particular page and capture just that – yes, just the text from an entire selection of pages.
Imagine having an infographic image in front of you, and all you need from the image is the data it has – the figures and facts. But you don’t want the design. What do you do?
You launch Snagit, click on Grab text from the preset or the Selection dropdown, and select the infographic area from where you want the text derived. The task is done in a matter of seconds!
Grab text is an amazing feature for collecting text from all sorts of images, web-pages, and pdfs without going through strenuous manual copying or copy-pasting methods. It takes seconds literally to grab chunks of text or whole paragraphs that can be copied or shared.
Create Videos
Explainer videos. Check.
Gaming Videos. Check.
How-to-videos. Check.
Product tutorials. Check.
Creating videos is as easy as it gets with Snagit. You don’t need fancy equipment, and you don’t need an extra microphone.
While recording screen-capture videos, you can switch between tabs and also switch to the webcam. You can create gifs from your recorded videos after capture and save screenshots from the video as png.
Full page and Panoramic screen captures
The one problem I have faced with screen-capture tools is the lack of control. At times, the entire page is not needed. Perhaps only a bit below the fold is required.
At times, the page is too long, and trying to crop the screenshot of the full page capture impacts the image’s quality.
With Snagit 2021 Panoramic capture mode, select only the area you want for capture without taking the whole page screenshot.
You can select and capture an area both horizontally and vertically with panoramic screen capture. Having the freedom to select horizontally comes as an intuitive feature. I generally use the trick to reduce the screen-size using (CTRL) + (minus) and then take the screenshot. With Snagit panoramic feature, taking horizontal screenshots becomes really easy. Kudos to the Techsmith team for including this.
Full-Screen Capture and Scrolling Window Capture
You can capture a long webpage in one shot with the full-screen capture option, available from the Image Selection dropbox. Snagit also supports scrolling window capture in both horizontal and vertical ways.
The scrolling window feature is different from the panoramic capture because it supports capturing the whole window instead of a particular area or region.
Advanced tools
Snagit 2021 has been remodeled, keeping working professionals in mind. There are several features packed under the Advanced features that need a special mention here :
Object feature
You can choose to select an object to capture in an entire webpage. You can include that object in your document from the Snagit library later on.
Multiple area feature
If you have multiple objects or multiple screen areas to be captured, use the multiple area feature from the advanced features sub-dropdown.
Menu capture
Want just the menu style and options to be copied? Snagit has you covered. Use the menu feature to copy only the menu of a webpage or an existing document. Snagit does it in seconds.
Clipboard capture
The clipboard is where the copied or cut data is temporarily stored before being pasted. If you have something copied in your clipboard, let’s say a longish url, you can have it saved using the clipboard capture feature of Snagit 2021.
Freehand capture
This tool reminded me of paint. This is perhaps the only feature that seems redundant to me, but that is probably because I’m bad at freehand captures.
However, I know of people who use freehand selection with ease and prefer it to auto selections. The freehand capture will come in handy for those who prefer to select their capture areas using freehand, manual mode.
File capture
Want to capture an image or document from a folder stored in one of your computer drives? The File capture feature lets you scan your files for the document/image you are looking for and then lets you take an image or video of it.
Snagit Editor
The SnagIt Editor needs a special section to mention all the awesomeness it contains.
Apart from all the required paraphernalia of an image editor, the Snagit editor has some useful features specifically helpful for document creation :
Pre-built documentation templates
Choose from the wide range of document templates to create your own visual document with numbers and descriptions. Choose images and videos from your Snagit library. Edit as needed.
Annotations
Use the callout feature to easily annotate your documents and images. You can even edit the callout box color and the font of the text.
Step tool
Numbering your documents using numbers or alphabets becomes easy with the step tool.
Stamps feature
Stamps are emojis that you can put in your document. Not sure why Snagit prefers calling them stamps, but in simple terms, you can create more decorative and pictorial documents with the help of the stamps in Snagit.
Move objects
This is another cool feature wherein you can enable a smart move, and the editor detects movable objects in your screenshot.
Once it has identified movable objects, you can then rearrange or move around sections of your document.
Text, Fill & Edit
You can add text to your documents, fill them with colors, you can blur, highlight, crop, and erase. You can magnify certain areas of the document. The edit options are numerous.
Easy Sharing
Snagit offers a lot of sharing options to system tools as well as 3rdparty tools. Special mention for direct sharing with FTP – a handy sharing option for website designers and developers.
Of the 3rd party sharing apps, notable are Evernote, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, Email clients, etc.
Have you tried Asana? Read the review here.
Other noteworthy features | Snagit 2021 Review
- Supports tons of file formats – BMP, pdf, tiff, eps, PSD, WMF, jpeg, .ICO, gif, png, jpg, and a lot more.
- Presets can be changed as per preference.
- You can create videos from images.
- The editor is easily accessible from the capture window.
- You can pre-select effects for image captures.
- There’s a help section in the Capture window that links Snagit tutorials and other help options should you need any help operating Snagit.
Snagit 2021 Tutorial: How to use some of the most important features of Snagit (videos for some features included)
I have Snagit pinned to my taskbar for faster access to it.
As I tutorial videos for my team members, it helps me reach out fast when my most important apps are in the taskbar. Keep your most frequent apps in the taskbar.
Screen recorder with audio
- Open the Snagit Window.
- Click the Video button.
- Click on Capture red round button.
- A round magnifier pointer with perforated lines will appear – these are your drag indicators, and you would need to select the area you want to record by dragging the mouse or touchpad.
- Once you have selected the area, you can choose to resize it using the small box features on all four sides of the selected area.
- When you have rearranged, click on the red Record button, and voila! Your screen recording has started!
Tip: if you want to create mute, explainer videos like those I created below, toggle off the ‘Record Microphone’ option at the Snagit Capture window.
If you would instead want the system audio to be recorded, for example, if you have some soft music on as a background score for your videos, toggle on the ‘Record System audio” option at the Snagit Capture window.
Panoramic Capture
It took me some time to get used to the panoramic capture part. But once I mastered it, I knew that I was using Snagit for all my page captures from now on.
- From the Snagit Capture window, click on Image, and then click on the dropdown button on the Selection Box.
- From the dropdown, select Panoramic.
- Click on the red Capture button, and drag your drag indicators to select the area.
- Click on Start, and at an even pace, scroll vertically or horizontally the areas you want to be captured.
- Click Stop, view your captured area in the editor section.
Tip: While scrolling, do so at an even pace, not too fast nor too slow. Do not go back and forth.
Here’s a tutorial video:
All in One Capture
- Open up the Snagit window.
- Click on the red capture button.
- The options of image capture, video recording, and panoramic capture will be shown – choose your preferred method.
- Drag and select, then click or record. Edit it in Snagit editor. Share it after editing.
Object Capture
- Open up the Snagit window.
- Click on Image from the left-most options.
- Then click on the dropdown of the Selection box, click on the arrow beside Advanced.
- Choose Object, and hit the red capture button.
- Select the object from the objects available from the webpage.
- Edit, save to your desired location, or share with others.
Multiple Area Capture
- Open up the Snagit window.
- Click on Image from the left-most options.
- Then click on the dropdown of the Selection box, click on the arrow beside Advanced.
- Choose Object, and hit the red capture button.
- Select the object from the objects available from the webpage.
- Edit, save to your desired location, or share with others.
Grab Text
- Open up the Snagit window.
- Click on Image from the left-most options.
- Then click on the dropdown of the Selection box, choose Grab Text.
- Hit on the red capture button.
- Select the area you want the text to be captured from.
- Copy the text or edit it and save it for use later.
File Capture
- Open up the Snagit window.
- Click on Image from the left-most options.
- Then click on the dropdown of the Selection box, click on the arrow beside Advanced.
- Choose File, and hit the red capture button.
- Select the file from folders located in your computer, drag the desired area to be captured.
- Edit, save to your desired location, or share the file.
Smart Move – Editor feature
- Open up the Snagit Editor form the ‘Open Editor’ link at the Snagit capture window’s bottom right side. The editor is also accessible after every image or video capture (unless you toggle it off in the Capture window).
- Select an image.
- From the top menu, click on Move.
- The Smart move toggle button will appear on the right panel. Toggle it on.
- Snagit will identify movable objects in your document.
- You can move the objects as required.
Choosing templates – Editor feature
- Open up the Snagit Editor form the ‘Open Editor’ link at the Snagit capture window’s bottom right side. The editor is also accessible after every image or video capture (unless you toggle it off in the Capture window).
- Click on the Create dropdown from the left-most menu.
- Click the ‘Image from Template’ option.
- Choose a template. Edit and save or share.
Creating videos from images
- Open up the Snagit Editor form the ‘Open Editor’ link at the Snagit capture window’s bottom right side. The editor is also accessible after every image or video capture (unless you toggle it off in the Capture window).
- Click on the Create dropdown from the left-most menu.
- Click the ‘Video from Images’ option.
- Choose from images within the Snagit library or from the computer.
- Stop when done, edit, and save or share.
Have you used the Snagit 2021 version? I would strongly recommend going for the free 14-day trial to try it out and play around with the amazing features. Create a video or two, and I’m sure you’ll be blown away with the ease of things.
Click here to try Snagit for free.
Share your experiences of using Snagit with us. What do you use Snagit for? We would also love to hear what you love (or dislike) about it.
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