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tootyfrooty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2020
21
5
Hi, I am looking for a screen capture app to use on a MAC. At the moment I use Jing (2.8.1) by techSmith and it works perfectly. They are forcing me to upgrade which I don't want to do. The new version might be better but the old one is simple and I don't want to store my images anywhere other than my local machine. Typical features required, arrow pointing, text box writing, crop any window size. Any recommendations?
 

Pomeroy

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2008
344
29
Missouri
Try the one that came on your Mac, Preview. I has a pretty good Screen Capture built in. It does all you mentioned. You can save it anywhere, give it a Name and Edit it with several tools. Look under Previews Edit menu.
 

tootyfrooty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2020
21
5
Hi, I use Mac OS 10.13.6 are you referring to the preview app? I use this for previewing images but not aware that I can use it for mark up editing... I do use the MAC full screen shortcut (Apple, Shift 3) for full screen captures.

The Preview app seems to have a feature called annotate which has what looks like mark up editing options but they are greyed out.
 

Pomeroy

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2008
344
29
Missouri
Annotate will be greyed out till you either open an image or take a screen shot. But Preview has a lot more to it than just viewing picture's or PDF's . Look under the preview View menu and make sure that the tool bar is showing in Preview. Then click the icon that looks like a circle with a pencil tip in it. That will show the Markup tool bar.
 
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tootyfrooty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2020
21
5
@calliex I have been using the short cut (Apple, shift 3) for well over 10 years but never new it had an app 'GRAB'. Was very surprised when I searched my Mac for GRAB and it showed up. Every day is a school day
 
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D.T.

macrumors G4
Sep 15, 2011
11,050
12,467
Vilano Beach, FL
The native screencap is pretty stout:

Full screen:

  • Cmd-Shift-3: Full screen shot, save to disk
  • Cmd-Shift-Option-3: Full screen shot, copy to clipboard
Part of the screen, window, menu:

  • Cmd-Shift-4: Pick a region, save to disk
  • Cmd-Shift-Option-4: Pick a region, copy to clipboard
  • While making the selection, pressing Shift locks one of the directions, Option is completely silly, Space lets you move the selection around.
  • Pressing space switches to the window selector. To make a screen shot of the window without the shadow, press Option while clicking on the window.

If it's in your clipboard you can open Preview and Cmd-N for a new doc and it will paste in the clipboard, then you can easily mark it up (if you're pasting into an email you can markup directly in the email as well).

If you do Cmd-Shift-5, you'll get a dialog for a selecting the above options, as well as a timer and a fixed location capture (so if you want to activate a menu, etc.), you can also select the screen or a region to capture video from your display (it's handy for making a quick demo for an app/code/etc.)
 

Pomeroy

macrumors 6502
Sep 27, 2008
344
29
Missouri
Grab is now call Screenshot. You can set it up to open a screenshot in Preview where you can Add text, lines, arrows, boxes or circles all with different colors. Or just open Preview and do the screenshot and avoid the app Grab/Screnshot. I keep Preview on the dock, one of the handiest things on the Mac for dealing with images. Preview does what you tell it to do, You open a picture with it and you can work on that picture, but if you drop a Folder on it or open a folder with it then there are a lot of things you can do as a batch. Just be sure in the View menu you have Thumbnails selected. Now you can select one on more to work on.
 
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MacGizmo

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2003
3,204
2,506
Arizona
Try MonoSnap. It's free and has plenty of markup options including text, arrows, boxes, free-form pencil, cropping, resizing and more. It also captures video of your screen at 60fps.

Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 12.12.13 AM.png
 

MacGizmo

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2003
3,204
2,506
Arizona
No third party app needed.
• COM+SHIFT+5 => Grab
• Use Preview to edit captures.
Since Catalina you have the option to edit the screen picture directly, before you save it.
MacWorld created a pretty good guide for this: https://www.macworld.com/article/3286528/article.html
The built-in option is nice for the average consumer, but not even an option for people who take a lot of screenshots. It requires too many steps, and quite frankly, the markup tools are cumbersome, buggy, and lacking compared to other apps. The movie recording option Apple provides saves as a .mov file - which is useless for everyone else in the world other than the person taking the video.

I love Apple's built-in option, I use it 90% of the time. But I also don't require a whole lot in the way of markups and annotations in my screenshots, and rarely record screen video. If I did, I would most decidedly use a 3rd party app like MonoSnap.
 
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tootyfrooty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2020
21
5
@MacGizmo Thanks so much for recommending MonoSnap. 100% perfect, simple and easy access from the top menu bar. LOVE IT!
 

MacGizmo

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2003
3,204
2,506
Arizona
@MacGizmo Thanks so much for recommending MonoSnap. 100% perfect, simple and easy access from the top menu bar. LOVE IT!
You're very welcome! I've already installed it on macOS 11 (Big Sur) Beta and it appears to work just fine... although the icon in the menubar is "squeezed/horizontally scaled" - hopefully, that gets fixed in their first update after Big Sur's official release this fall.
 

oleksii

macrumors newbie
Apr 5, 2021
1
0
Hi everyone! May I also suggest a tool I'm working on called Folge - https://folge.me ?
It is not only a screen capturing app, but helps with creating and generating onboaring guides, tutorials and documentation.

Folge captures all your mouse clicks in screenshots, and conveniently lets you merge screenshots into one document, add context and in the end export as doc, pdf, powerpoint slides.

Would really love to hear your feedback :)
 
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