OS X already offers a means of capturing screenshots with a few keyboard shortcuts, but if you want to do a little more you have to grab a third-party tool. Of the many available, Skitch is our favorite for its many annotation tools and instant-sharing options.
If you're not familiar with screenshots, read our beginner's guide.
How to Take a Screenshot or Picture of What's On Your Computer Screen
Insert a screen clipping on a page. You can use OneNote to take a screen clipping of any part of your computer screen and add it as a picture in your notes. Bring into view the information that you want to capture (for example, a web page or another application). Beside the Send to OneNote Tool, change the toggle to On. OneNote Clipper 2.0—introducing a more powerful and intelligent web clipping tool By the OneNote team, on March 12, 2015 March 12, 2015 Today’s post was written by Avneesh Kohli, program manager on the OneNote team.
There are a couple of reasons you might want to take a screenshot (a.k.a., screen capture or screen …
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Screen Capture Tool For MacSkitch
Platform: OS X, Windows, iOS, Android
Price: Free (or $10 for Pro) Download Page Features
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Where It Excels
Skitch is pretty great. We take a lot of screenshots at Lifehacker, so a good screen capture tool can be invaluable to us. To others it might be less relevant, but seeing as Skitch is free it's a good app to have around even if you only share what's on your screen from time to time. If you need to show tech support a problem on your screen, or your mother where to look for a certain feature in an app, you can take a quick screenshot with Skitch, annotate if necessary, have it automatically upload that screenshot, and leave you with a URL in your clipboard. It's also really handy for designers, because you can make quick notes on images without actually making any destructive edits to that image. You can also use Skitch to mock up changes to live web sites. There are plenty of great uses for the app, and seeing as it costs you nothing it's worth having around even if it is only a semi-regular convenience.
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Where It Falls Short
Skitch initially had issues with a somewhat confusing interface due to the many tools it offered, but recent updates have mostly solved that problem. Sharing tools have improved as well. While we appreciate the changes, some users do not. Reviews on the Mac App Store criticize Skitch for becoming too bloated like it's big brother Evernote. Because Evernote owns Skitch, the it favors the notebook app over everything else. While you can export your creations, Skitch makes it easier to work with the Evernote and that can be a little annoying if you don't want to use them together.
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The Competition
Grab, the built-in Mac OS X service that captures screenshots, might be sufficient for most people. If you're looking to pair an upload service to it, you can just add the great and free Cloud App. It can automatically upload your screenshots after you taking them. You won't get to annotate, draw on, or do anything fancy to them, but you it's a quick and easy way to share everything on your screen without any features you (potentially) don't need.
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Captur (Free) isn't really a full-fledge screenshot tool but adds some extra functionality to the one built-in to Mac OS X. Instead of relying on keyboard shortcuts, you can use Captur to initiate common screenshot tasks from the menubar.
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Snagit ($50) was initially only for Windows, and a Lifehacker reader favorite, but now it is available for Mac. It offers a lot of the same functionality as Skitch, yet it costs $50. Why would you pay $50 when you've got an app that does the same thing for free? I don't know.
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Hive Five Winner for Best Screen Capture Tool: Snagit
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Screen Clipping On MacRead
Jing (Free) comes from the same people who make Snagit. It's similar, but with fewer features, and focuses on the online and social aspects of sharing your screen. One big advantage it offers is video capture. If you want images and video and don't want to pay for them, plus some pretty good online sharing options, you'll want to give Jing a look.
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LittleSnapper ($40) is a favorite among some, but I've never been able to see how anyone can justify paying $40 for a screenshot tool. To Little Snapper's advantage, it offers a very nice image management tool and integrated web site clipping option. It used to include use of the web app Ember, allowing you to upload anything you snapped or stored in LittleSnapper, but the developers sold Ember to the developers of Cloud App in early 2011. What LittleSnapper offers is, essentially, a pretty good app for organization. Why you'd want to pay $40 to better-organize your screenshots, however, is something I don't entirely understand. (And I say this having used the app for about a month.) Nonetheless, some people do and some people love it. It is a good app, and definitely more attractive. Skitch is just better at the important stuff.
Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
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Screen Clipping Tool For MacRecommended Snipping Tools for Windows and MacSnagIt
While the free apps above only capture screenshots, SnagIt can also capture video, and it comes with more robust tools for editing both photos and videos. SnagIt can also make animated GIFs and record audio, and you get a variety of annotation tools. You can try it for free for 15 days, and if you own an older version, you get a 50% upgrade discount.
Free Screen Clipping Tool For MacGreenshot
Greenshot (Windows only) is pretty similar to Lightshot, but it has better cloud support. During installation, you can install plug-ins for Dropbox, Photobucket, Flickr, and others. You can also automate attachment to emails, export to Microsoft Office apps, and highlight or mask parts of the image without having to open an image editor.
Screen Snipping Tool MacLightShotScreen Snapshot Tool For Mac
Lightshot is a free tool you can set to pop up whenever you press the print screen key (Shift-Command-4 on Macs), or it can make print screen automatically create an image file. Lightshot will save either a JPEG or a PNG file, and its image quality slider has 100 increments. Unfortunately, you don't get a preview of what the different slider ranges look like, but most tools of this type have no increments to begin with.
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