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With support for photos and video, advanced annotation tools, and bountiful effects, Snagit is the gold standard for capturing and editing screens on the Mac. However, fifty dollars is too much for many users to spend on a utility. Global Delight’s Voila ($14.99) delivers much of what makes Snagit seductive at less than one-third the cost. From capturing images and videos of windows, menus, and screens to marking up images with arrows, callouts, and text boxes, Voila delivers something for everyone. It’s not perfect, but it is powerful and affordable.
Building a Library
You can download Voila from the Global Delight website or from the Mac App Store. The virtue of purchasing from the website is that you can view family packages and education discounts. Students and educators pay a discount price ($13.99), and households can save with the family pack ($34.99 for up to five Macs). Once you have the utility installed, you can access Voila from either the Application folder or a small cropping symbol in the Apple menu bar.
Voila captures both images and video. When it comes to images, you can capture a full screen, a manual selection, a window, or a menu using either shortcut keys or the menu bar drop-down. You can even use Voila for taking multiple grabs from the same screen at the same time. Voila includes its own Web browser for loading and capturing Web pages. For video, you can choose between a manual selection and the entire screen, and you have the added bonus of capturing video from your iSight camera. Voila even supports audio from an internal or external mic.
Captures are saved to the Organizer. In my testing, however, there was sometimes a lag between when I captured a screen and when it transferred to the Organizer. While I am tempted to attribute this to an aging MacBook, I haven’t encountered such lags with Snagit. By default, Voila’s Selection tool is somewhat inexact; however, you can unlock cursor magnification (comparable to that of SnagIt) by ticking a box titled “Show Magnifier for Capture & Recording” in the General preference pane. Once enabled, Voila’s Selection capture is far more effective than what’s built into Apple’s operating system.
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Editing Screencaps
Voila’s main window includes an Organizer, from which you can view images and videos and sort them using Smart Collections (like that in iTunes), as well as Tools and Effects you can use to annotate images. The tools are impressive and compare favorably to the markup functions of Adobe Photoshop Elements. You can draw freehand, insert textboxes, erase or blur sensitive information, add arrows and callouts, and even drop preset stamps. In addition to traditional tools for adjusting exposure, contrast, saturation, and hue, Voila also bundles a couple dozen filters, ranging from Kaleidoscope to Pixelate. You can even skew the perspective of a screencap or spotlight a specific feature.
Options are slimmer for video. You can trim a screencast using QuickTime. That’s it. If you intend to make videocasts, edit them elsewhere. That said, the application does enable you to save images and videos in all the usual flavors and to share them using a myriad of third-party integrations: Voila supports Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Google Drive, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube. If you can’t find your platform, you can even configure an FTP or SFTP account.
There You Have It
If the price of Editors’ Choice winner Snagit is too high, Voila delivers much of Snagit’s functionality for far less. Start with the free trial. If you perform a lot of screen captures, there’s a good chance you’ll end up buying the full license.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/voila-for-mac
