SnagIt version 12 was released in May 2014 and the last upgrade to version 12 was in August 2015, so it feels like a long wait for version 13, which was released on the 7th of June. But maybe not. Version 11 was released in February 2012, version 10 in May 2010, version 9 in June 2008, version 8 in January 2006, and version 7 in November 2003. So maybe it's more like the standard development cycle. In any event, version 13 seems to be well worth the wait.
Anyone whose duties include documentation of any computer-based procedure or application should be using SnagIt. Yes, you can use the Windows PrintScreen function to grab a screen shot and then paste it into Paint, but then what? SnagIt has all the tools needed to capture exactly what is needed -- with or without the cursor -- and then highlight and annotate the image to call attention to important information.
By the way, if you're a TechByter editor who needs to document SnagIt with SnagIt, you'll need to tell the application not to hide itself during the capture process.
None of that is new and neither is the ability to customize SnagIt. After all, users have been able to customize the program for years, but version 13 goes far beyond what has been available. For example, one person might need to use the blur function frequently while another might never use it. SnagIt has so many tools that displaying all of them simultaneously makes for a crowded and confusing tool-bar. Now users can remove tools they rarely use and position the tools they use often to be easily reached.
Although TechSmith also offers Camtasia for those who need to capture and edit complex on-screen videos, SnagIt has had a video capture option for several years. Now it's even more powerful because it's possible to switch between recording the screen and using the computer's web cam.
If you create a video and would like to make it available where a video player isn't available, use SnagIt to create an animated GIF. There's no sound, of course, but the GIF will be far smaller than a video file.
The scroll capture function has been greatly improved. The automatic scroll capture didn't always work right because it was dependent on communication between SnagIt and the underlying application. In some cases, it didn't work at all. For example, Google Maps. There's no scroll bar and there's no way for SnagIt to know how wide or long a section you want to capture. The panoramic capture function lets you define an area on the screen and then scroll to capture.
The larger image above is only 1000 pixels wide, so to see the full-size panoramic capture, click here.
SnagIt has been one of my favorite programs since sometime in the previous century and this new version makes it clear that nothing is going to change. It's easy to assign keystrokes that will trigger specific types of captures. Here I have defined a standard capture, which can be either full screen or a selected area, as Ctrl-Shift-P. To start the panoramic process, it's Ctrl-Alt-Shift-P. If I want the capture process to be delayed for 5 seconds, it's Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D and video captures are initiated with Ctrl-Shift-V.
The developers have always managed to think far enough ahead that they always surprise me with features that are immediately obvious and essential, but still features that hadn't occurred to me as even being possible.
I'll turn things around this time. The ability to switch between screen video capture and webcam is cool, but I'll challenge the developers to find a way to capture both screen video and picture-in-picture from the webcam. Who knows? Maybe they're already working on that for version 14.
By the way, a few versions back, TechSmith introduced SnagIt for the Mac. Mac users will find version 4 instead of version 14 and this reflects SnagIt's heritage of being a Windows application at the beginning. I'll be looking at the Mac version and you can expect to hear more about it on a future program.
TechSmith positions SnagIt as a tool for trainers, communicators, and marketers. That's a remarkably broad user base. Trainers and marketers have little in common, so making a program that satisfies both could be challenging. The company has been successful, though.
Those who create corporate training and documentation materials can do far more than provide a list of steps. With SnagIt, they can describe and illustrate a process. "When you click the FOO button, this is what you will see on the screen" is a lot easier for people to understand than a paragraph that describes what happens when the user pressed the FOO button.
The new ability to create animated GIFs is being pitched to IT managers who frequently need to show users a process. "A static image might not do [a particular step] justice and a long-winded video will get lost in translation." Animated GIFs are very old technology, but SnagIt gives them a new reason for being.
For sales and marketing folks, SnagIt provides a quick and easy way to provide snapshots of work in progress. Instead of explaining brochures, ads, and websites that they're working on, designers can provide illustrations that decision makers can use. And the webcam feature? Marketers can "create an on-demand follow-up video response after a pitch [to] help improve communication and close business faster."
SnagIt 13 Pushes Screen Capture Technology to a New LevelAnyone who needs to share information about how something works -- whether for documentation or sales -- should take a look at SnagIt. SnagIt has been a must-have application since 1990 for anyone who needs to capture images on a computer screen. The latest version makes it even more important.
Additional details are available on the TechSmith website.
It seems like just a few days ago that Adobe released updates to Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. In fact, it was just last week that I described the improvements in those applications. Now it time for updates that affect the entire Creative Cloud suite of applications. Let's take a look at what Creative Cloud subscribers started seeing on their computers this week.
One enhancement that's been added across virtually the entire Creative Cloud suite is access to Adobe Stock from within each application. This can be a significant time saver for designers who use stock images. Until now, licensing an image required switching to a browser and connecting to the Adobe Stock site. Once on the site, the designer had to license the image and then download it.
The workflow is now quite different: Access Adobe Stock from inside InDesign or Photoshop or Illustrator, then download a low-resolution comp file for each image that you're considering (or just license the image directly if you already know that you want to use it). Place the comp image in your document and make any modifications (cropping, color adjustment, and such). When you're ready to license the image, a single click does everything: The image is downloaded, it replaces the comp image in the document, and and adjustments made to the comp will be duplicated on the high-res image.
In addition to the basic stock service, Adobe is introducing the Premium Collection of higher-quality stock content. While the basic stock images can be licensed for about $10, photos in the Premium Collection will be available for à la carte purchase and range from $100 to $500. Currently about 100 thousand images are available in the Premium Collection and Adobe Stock has 55 million images.
A new feature called content-aware crop expands the content aware functionality. Although the new feature doesn't do anything that a user couldn't do previously, it now can be done more quickly.
Here's an image that's crooked. The usual fix for an image like this is rotation and crop.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
Press Esc to dismiss the larger image.
When an image is rotated, it must be cropped to avoid blank areas.
Or the user could leave the blank areas and then visit each of the 4 areas and apply content-aware fill to them.
The new alternative requires a single click and then Photoshop automatically applies content-aware fill to each area.
Three of the blank areas in this image are filled in perfectly. The fourth (upper left corner) is close enough that most people will never notice a problem.
This is a good example of how product managers at Adobe work to understand what the user's goal would be. Clearly, if the user rotates an image and doesn't crop to eliminate blank areas, the next step will be a content-aware fill. So why not offer to do this for the user?
What if a client provides an image from 10 years ago and says that you must create a new ad program that uses the same typefaces? Identifying those old typefaces can be a problem, particularly if you're not the person who created the original art.
As you know, I always try to break new features, so I reached back a decade to find something that I created using a grunge typeface. These are notoriously difficult for identification applications to work with and I expected it to fail. Let's see what happened.
Here's the mailing label side of the document. In addition to using a grunge typeface, I placed it on a gray background. The file I loaded into Photoshop was a flattened PNG, so there were no clues about what the typeface is.
As luck (or my own anal retentive nature) would have it, I still have the original InDesign file from 2006, so I can find out what the typeface is. If I didn't have that, what would I do?
The typeface is called Vademecum.
When you have a document like this, you start by opening it in Photoshop.
Then choose Type -> Match Font.
You'll be told to place the text you want to identify within a bounding box.
Then Adobe's typeface matching technology takes over.
In this case, it identified 10 typefaces as possible matches, and it struck out. None of the typefaces identified as a possible match is Vademecum. In fact, none of the identified faces is even close.
But, as I said, I set out to make this a test the the process would fail. The typeface is virtually unidentifiable by any automated process and Match Font is, after all, the initial release of the technology.
Can a high-powered application such at What The Font on MyFonts.com do any better?
I uploaded the file and then spent nearly 15 minutes working my way through a series of questions about the document and the typeface.
When the process was complete, MyFonts offered ...
... 5 typefaces as possible matches. Only 1 of those was even remotely close.
If you're looking for a common serif or sans serif face, Match Font will probably help you. If not, you'll probably need to search the old fashioned way.
It's important to note that this is not a condemnation of the new technology. Adobe is skilled when it comes to establishing a road map for new applications and new features. I have no doubt that the Match Font function will become an essential feature as the process evolves.
If you're trying to identify a more standard typeface, you'll get better results from Match Font and you can expect future versions of the Creative Cloud application to improve on version 1 of this utility.
By the way, here's the actual typeface that was used. It's available from the DaFont website.
Liquify is a Photoshop feature that can be used to make subtle modifications to a shape. Now Face-Aware Liquify can recognize faces in a photograph. Here's an Adobe Stock image. I've downloaded just the low-resolution comp.
After turning Liquify on, I hovered the mouse over the man's face. Liquify identified the face and suggested edit points. Hovering over the eyes or mouth will suggest edit points there, too.
I wondered what would happen if the man had a shorter, rounder face. Then I moved his eyes closer together and made them larger. And I thought he should have more of a smile.
The software makes uncommonly good selections about where the edit points should be and automatically applies some limits so that they changes are technically subtle.
The updates became available to Adobe Creative Cloud members this week. Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe says that developers had two goals for this version: "saving our customers time and helping them jump-start their creative engines."
Creative Cloud Features Continue to SurpriseThe best single-word description of Adobe might well be "inventive". With every new major release, as well as with ongoing feature
updates that are pushed out whenever they're deemed to be ready for use, the Creative Cloud suite becomes more capable.
Additional details are available on the Adobe website.
Maybe the browser wars are about to heat up again. Firefox and Chrome have been the big two. Internet Explorer is being replaced by Edge. Safari is still available, but only on Macs. And then there's Maxthon.
The China-based browser developer says that its new MX5 version, which will be released in July, will "totally transform the browsing industry." There might be just a bit of hyperbole in that claim.
It's important to note that I have not seen the actual browser in action, but I have read materials and reviewed a video provided by Maxthon.
Developers say that rather than just browsing a restaurant's information on-line, people want to be able to order easily. Apps have stepped in to provide that kind of service, but these apps take precious memory, particularly on smart phones. Maxthon plans to incorporate these functions into the browser.
That alone sounds like a challenging effort. Maxthon will be opposed by developers of the apps that provide services now and they'll also have to find a way to work with millions of restaurants and other stores to provide the ability to place orders. But it seems like a worthwhile endeavor.
Maxthon says that most people prefer having services integrated into the browser instead of having to install extra apps and that this is even more the case on mobile devices.
Maxthon currently claims more than 400 million users worldwide. It's a relatively new browser in the Americas, but Maxthon has been in business for 13 years. The browser has built-in ad block features. Remember when Internet Explorer had 95% of the market? At the time, Maxthon gained 25% market share in China. It's a company and a browser that deserves to be given serious consideration.
The new version of the Maxthon browser will be released in July and CEO Jeff Chen says that the MX5 users "will be able to sync data, personal information, and browsing preferences in different desktop and mobile devices, regardless of operating system."
The company develops only browsers and says 100 million people in 140 countries use the Maxthon browser each month. Headquartered in Beijing, Maxthon has offices in Hong Kong and San Francisco.
To register so that you'll be notified when the browser is released, visit the sign-up site (or, if you can read Chinese, try this.)
Western Digital has introduced several new disk drives in both the Passport and Cloud series. My Passport Wireless Pro Wi-Fi and My Cloud Pro Series network attached storage (NAS). These drives are intended primarily for photographers and others who work in visual media on computers.
The new drives use the My Cloud mobile app and a new version of the app will be provided to make them compatible with the Adobe Creative Cloud. As noted elsewhere in today's program, Creative Cloud has made huge changes in connectivity across all of its applications.
Western Digital says that portability, reliability, capacity, speed, and interoperability are crucial for creative professionals because, according to marketing vice president Sven Rathjen, their "livelihoods rely on the strength of the technology they use to store their life's work." Rathjen says that the new drives are designed to fit seamlessly into the user's workflow regardless of where the work occurs. As a result, "storage, transfer, back-up, editing, and even streaming options are readily available."
My Passport Wireless Pro Wi-Fi mobile storage lets people leave their computer behind on a photo shoot. Using the direct Wi-Fi connection, photographers can automatically back up files from compatible cameras, as well as save, edit and transfer work from up to 8 other devices connected to the drive. And there's also a built-in card reader.
When the shoot is over and it's time for editing or studio work, the My Cloud Pro Series NAS device offers up to 32TB of storage. They can directly import from cameras, memory card readers, and other USB storage.
In addition, the My Cloud drives include a hardware accelerated video processor. A video processor in a disk drive? Why are you looking at me as if you think I've just sailed over the edge? The disk drive's transcoding capabilities mean it can accept, edit, store, and stream content to and from popular formats, including 4K video. Yeah, it took me a bit to wrap my mind around that concept, too.
My Passport Wireless Pro Wi-Fi drives are available now and are priced in the mid $200 range. My Cloud Pro Series NAS devices are also available now at prices from $400 to $1650, depending on capacity.
