Even though the [Print Scrn] key can capture an image, the job sometimes calls for something more sophisticated. Here IS Snaglt, which is great not only at capturing an image of your computer screen but offers a whole lot more.

Style and Features
The first thing users of older versions will notice is the change in the visual style or skin of the application to a black edged window which complements Vista very nicely. Apart from this and the button Icons, there seems to be nothing very different on the surface of version 9, but digging a little deeper into the innards
of the tool reveals a whole lot going on underneath the surface.

First of all, the old linear workflow of the program has disappeared. Now, Snag It stores every screen capture automatically. This allows the user to stop fretting about the filenames of captured Images or the folder and directory where they need to be saved. Thus, whether the Image captured has been saved by the user or not. it can be found later. Even if all you can remember is one single detail, for instance, the date or Web page you captured, you'll easily find the image.



The reason for this is that Snaglt keeps track of these details while automatically saving image files. Furthermore, searching for the image isn't a tedious job of wading through hundreds and thousands of saved images with nothing to help you but an obscure file name. The next new feature offered in the latest release is the ability to combine various images easily. The Snaglt Editor is not a new component but has been revamped. Instead of a menu bar it now has a ribbon, similar to Office 2007 programs.

An 'Open Captures' tray is on the bottom. Plus, the sidebar on the right hand side makes it easy to tag your captures. By tagging the images, bringing them up later on is also simpler. Another new element is the Hotspots tab which allows links to be created and modified in images. There are also two kinds of Flash pop-ups that can be inserted into an image-text and graphic.

Once you have added a flash element to the image, you need to save it as a Macromedia Flash file (SWF) or as an .Email Output'. In fact with the 'Send' tab, one can export the ima'ge to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint with one click, and even other programs like Paint or Photoshop. There is also support for sending the image to a website using FTP.

Performance
The coding of the program has obviously been cleaned up. It runs a whole lot smoother than version 8, and turning on the One-Click capture feature doesn't slow down the system as it used to. Version 8 occupied 8,428 KB and version 9 occupies 19,248 KB of the system's physical memory resources but still operates efficiently. This is because the Snaglt Editor which contributes to 85 percent of the application runs as a separate process.

FOR: Powerful screenshot tool with image editing functions. AGAINST: It is a bit expensive.