Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

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forfear
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Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

Nope this isn't a marketing promo or a gee whiz sort of post. I'll write this fast based on a little more than first impressions, so apologies if the words come a little less than smooth.

Capture is sometimes the lesser known tool to its big cousins like Flare, Blaze and Analyzer. after all its only a screenshot tool...i was surprised as I tried it a little more and got past the 'it aint Snagit' .


The more i use Capture, the more I feel that compared to the regular suspects for screencapturing, Capture does do the job rather differently.
which is why i guess acceptance comes a bit hard initially.

For one thing, there is quite a bit automation although batch processing images isn't in it.

Drag callout onto a screenshot and if you set it up correctly, it'll automatically blur the background or set the image to grayscale or do it both together....all in one simple motion. That's extremely efficient.

Furthermore when you crop an image, the cropping is non-destructive. this is a world first, IMHO. If I did this in PhotoShop or most tools, i'd have to save the screenshot as a new name Screen_original, Screen_320. or something like that

If a new crop is required, i just load up the image in capture, and uncrop the picture, all the original image data is still there. Amazing!

Or if the callout in a screenshot needs to be changed, I open the image in Capture, retype the capture, and save it. Flare project updated. Its like the callouts were always layered in the screens.


Sure...i do wish the Callouts would have better anti-aliasing. Looks a bit pixelly to me especially with circles.

Some of the key thing
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by doc_guy »

Capture is a great tool. It just hasn't had development for a while now. There is a lot that it needs to be able to do in order to be my first-choice capturing tool. It has A LOT of great features that I love. I just wish that it had some others (like zoom when you crop, better aliasing for lines you draw, etc.)
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by LTinker68 »

I haven't played with it since its original release when I saw what it did to GIFs, and that still hasn't been fixed. I've been planning on getting back to it with the thought that I could use PNGs instead, but for some things GIFs are still great, especially for smaller file size. (Like saving a small icon image -- why save it as a 20Kb PNG file when you can save it as a 2Kb GIF?)

I can't believe there hasn't been a bigger outcry about what it does to GIFs.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by RamonS »

I thought PNG and GIF use basically the same compression, just that the one in PNG was always royalty free whereas the compression in GIF was not. I find that PNG and GIF give equally small files.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by doc_guy »

LTinker68 wrote:I haven't played with it since its original release when I saw what it did to GIFs, and that still hasn't been fixed. I've been planning on getting back to it with the thought that I could use PNGs instead, but for some things GIFs are still great, especially for smaller file size. (Like saving a small icon image -- why save it as a 20Kb PNG file when you can save it as a 2Kb GIF?)

I can't believe there hasn't been a bigger outcry about what it does to GIFs.
Frankly, I think that is because too many people abandoned it for other reasons. GIFs were/are only one problem among many. However, MadCap doesn't seem interested in putting development into what could be a fantastically awesome tool. As it is, it's just mediocre on the verge of greatness. You can feel it, but it's just not there yet.

Who knows. Maybe Capture will get some love after the next version of Flare is released.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by LTinker68 »

RamonS wrote:I thought PNG and GIF use basically the same compression, just that the one in PNG was always royalty free whereas the compression in GIF was not. I find that PNG and GIF give equally small files.
I don't know if they use the same compression, but I doubt it, since GIF is restricted to 256 colors and PNG can go to millions. Because of that, or maybe because it can do transparencies, PNG files are always larger than GIFs, even if it's the same image. It depends on how many colors the original image has, but even if there are less than 256, PNGs are still larger. That's why small things like icons I'll save as GIFs, but screenshots I'll save as PNGs.

Capture adds a dotting effect when it saves GIFs, so you can't use them (unless you like a dotted effect). Since I'm not going to run two different screen capture tools at the same time and swap between them depending on what file format I want to save as, I'm going to stick with SnagIt until Capture gets more development time and that issue is fixed. Although, like I said, I might switch to Capture and just save everything as PNGs, but it's low priority at the moment, since I'm familiar with SnagIt's interface.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

just logged a few bugs for capture during integration with Lingo...but otherwise i think capture is decent enough. did an inhouse team demo of the product.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

I am standardizing our team capture tools to Capture 2.0.

i've used snagit all from v7 to v9 on and off, also experimenting with freeware alternatives like ScreenshotCaptor and a bit Paint.NET (a photoshop, image editing tool, not in the same market though)

Blur, Grayscale and Adding notations, are actually 4 clicks in most tools.
In Capture, you do this, just by dragging a callout from a pallete onto an image and all three effects are automatically applied depending on what standard behaviours you want from the callout. Now thats remarkable...:)

To set print outputs to tiff, change dpi and grayscale, is usually 5 or more clicks. To insert it into a topic, assign conditions, save two files with different names, and then remember to apply the right effects for each standard. so all in all if you're doing it any other way, its 10 clicks or more per image. If they updated the UI, which they tend to do, close to release..well,...:)

in flare, once you set up a profile, its done in 2 clicks or so i think...didn't count but somewhere along those lines. And if you saved it as a standard profile for all future images, thats 10 clicks you never need to do again.

if you have 8 screenshots in a tutorial, that's 80 mouseclicks to insert images for different print mediums. else you can ignore mediums all together and use one standard for print and online nonetheless, which i think is smart as well.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

no one drives a rolls royce with racing decals and custom sport rims do they?...just being a little mischevious. :lol:
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by Rozzano »

All that stuff is great, but Capture won't let me zoom in on an image while I'm editing it. What good is that? Seems like a basic function, but with Capture it'll have to be a requested feature(?)

Wait, you mean I can't hold SHIFT and to draw a perfectly straight line? Or hold CTRL to draw a perfect circle/square in oval/rectangle mode? Or I can't scale an image down to 75%? Only increments of 0.1?

I can't change the base-width of the pointer for bubble callouts? It looks ridiculous having an obtuse triangle pointing to something a few pixels away. Then I have to sarcastically pull out a geometry book, a sheet of graph paper, and a protractor to get any use out of the shape and pointer x/y settings if I want any precision.

Capture is great how it works with Flare, and I do use it for some of the easy images I use in my projects. I really want to like it more, but it's no SnagIt replacement. SnagIt gives me control over my images, Capture does a lot of great stuff (integration with Flare, alignment of call outs, and features mentioned above), but some of the basic stuff is lacking.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by RamonS »

True, SnagIt has many advantages, but also many annoyances, the biggest one being the PITA way to get to the editor. What we want is a "CapIT Pro", a mix of the best features from Capture, SnagIt, and PaintShop Pro.
Hoping that MadCap can make some afternoons free for Capture development, drop them a line with all your ideas right here:
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by doc_guy »

Rozzano wrote:All that stuff is great, but Capture won't let me zoom in on an image while I'm editing it. What good is that? Seems like a basic function, but with Capture it'll have to be a requested feature(?)

Wait, you mean I can't hold SHIFT and to draw a perfectly straight line? Or hold CTRL to draw a perfect circle/square in oval/rectangle mode?
Ditto. I hate both of those things about Capture.
Rozzano wrote:Or I can't scale an image down to 75%? Only increments of 0.1?
To be fair here, you can scale down to 75%. You just have to type in the value: .75
Rozzano wrote:I can't change the base-width of the pointer for bubble callouts? It looks ridiculous having an obtuse triangle pointing to something a few pixels away. Then I have to sarcastically pull out a geometry book, a sheet of graph paper, and a protractor to get any use out of the shape and pointer x/y settings if I want any precision.

Capture is great how it works with Flare, and I do use it for some of the easy images I use in my projects. I really want to like it more, but it's no SnagIt replacement. SnagIt gives me control over my images, Capture does a lot of great stuff (integration with Flare, alignment of call outs, and features mentioned above), but some of the basic stuff is lacking.
Exactly. I totally agree with these points.

I use Capture in Flare when I want to use variables in my callouts. That works pretty well. For most other things, I'm still using SnagIT, because I can have so much more control over how I can edit my images. I wish there were a SnagIT version for Flare. All the power of SnagIT with the integration of Capture with Flare. I love how Capture keeps a properties file and publishable file for each image, and I miss that in SnagIT (version 9 now has something similar, but it isn't as easy to use, and requires multiple saving to make it useful).

Yeah. I wish I could have the best of both worlds. Sadly, there isn't any visible movement on the Capture front.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by Rozzano »

doc_guy wrote:
Rozzano wrote:Or I can't scale an image down to 75%? Only increments of 0.1?
To be fair here, you can scale down to 75%. You just have to type in the value: .75
Actually, it won't. You can type .75, but Capture rounds up to 0.8. Come on Capture, if I wanted 0.8 I would have used 0.8.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by doc_guy »

Wow you're right. How lame is that! (Not that you're right, but that you can't scale any more granular than 10% intervals....) I never realized that before.

Wow.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by doc_guy »

So, I looked into this a bit more. I'm not actually sure what Capture is doing here.

I opened an image. In the image properties I changed the scaling to .75. Capture replaced the .75 with a .8 in the interface. However, when I open the .properties file associated with the image (which Flare uses when it builds the target), the following code is there: <OriginalImage ImageScaleFactor="0.75">. So the interface is showing .8, but the code itself is set at the .75 that I manually entered in.

I tried another number. I changed the scale factor to .529 in the interface. The interface showed only .5, but the full .529 was carried over into the properties file.

Now what I don't know is whether Capture actually sizes by the value in the XML file, or whether Capture rounds up for the resize like it does for the display in the interface.

Anyway, it's still wonky.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by SteveS »

forfear wrote:no one drives a rolls royce with racing decals and custom sport rims do they?...just being a little mischevious. :lol:
Actually thats a Bentley. And I'll have my martini sheken, not stirred. :D
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

RamonS wrote:True, SnagIt has many advantages, but also many annoyances, the biggest one being the PITA way to get to the editor. What we want is a "CapIT Pro", a mix of the best features from Capture, SnagIt, and PaintShop Pro.
Hoping that MadCap can make some afternoons free for Capture development, drop them a line with all your ideas right here:
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx
This forum has a knack with new names, like coming up with Flaze, Blare and Praze.
CapIT Pro is nice addition from the community :)
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

i think as long there's Pat on Mimic, am sure the code base for Capture and Mimic are almost the same.

Enhancements to mimic will definitely be included into Capture...
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by doc_guy »

The problem is that the enhancements for Mimic are all related to the video aspect and not the still capture aspect. And you can't use Mimic to create screen captures; you still need Capture and Mimic together. So while they share the same basic code base, it's not like Blaze/Flare. Blaze, reportedly, is a subset of Flare 4 features. Basically every feature in Blaze is in Flare. But the Capture/Mimic relationship isn't like that, so the enhancements to one don't necessarily reflect in the other.

Maybe future versions will have the same relationship. In SAT terms, it would be nice if Flare : Blaze as Mimic : Capture.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by Andrew »

I've wanted to use Capture for a while; I *love* non-destructive editing, and I love the automation of callouts. I also *hate* the lack of copy/paste, which makes it unuseable for quick-n-dirty work. I use it primarily when I'm working on a one-off project and our corporate style doesn't matter (for example, internal documentation and PowerPoint presentations). Unfortunately, our documentation style uses Word's callout capabilities, so I can't switch to Capture until we change that style.
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Re: Capture is one of the hidden gems in screencapturing tools

Post by forfear »

Andrew wrote:... also *hate* the lack of copy/paste, which makes it unuseable for quick-n-dirty work. I use it primarily when I'm working on a one-off project and our corporate style doesn't matter (for example, internal documentation and PowerPoint presentations).
I hear ya bruddah. In fact, I think the entire Madcap suite could do with better and smoother Copy and Paste integration between all its products in line with most Windows application. But I think for some reason the technical team has held back on this respect...i think we need the voice of the masses to change the tide.

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx
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