Software publisher Ashampoo has been regularly carrying out promotional campaigns where they make products available to the public for free, a move that has turned them into a ‘household’ name. In their latest promotional drive customers are able to acquire a free license of their new screen capture software Ashampoo Snap 3.
Ashampoo Snap 3 can capture and save anything on your computer screen, including full motion videos. The screen capture includes the usual different modes of capture viz. full screen, active window, selected region and even scrolling windows for a pull webpage capture. An integrated graphics editing tools allow addition of arrows, drop shadows, text and text bubbles and highlight areas. Different filters to sharpen, blur, manipulate color levels etc are available.
In movie capture mode you can capture videos displayed anywhere on your screen and save them to high-quality WMV files. This can be used for screen casting to prepare demos and presentations. You can also plug in a microphone and add voice to the video.
Ashampoo Snap 3’s biggest annoyance is probably the interface – it’s too flamboyant and too obtrusive. For instance, the default setup adds a floating toolbar to the top of the screen. What the heck? It remains hidden except for a thin blue visible line, but still, what the heck? Fortunately, you can turn this thing off, which I did.
Next, when you hit the keyboard hotkey for grabbing the screen or use the appropriate buttons on the floating toolbar or from the menu on the system tray icon, the captured image automatically loads into their graphics editor. The graphics editor runs full screen, completely concealing the taskbar and start menu and access to any other program windows running on screen. Another WTF. I would have preferred if it auto saved the captured image to a folder for later use. I have dug through the settings, but was unable to locate such an option.
Ashampoo Snap 3 didn’t leave a very good impression on me. They could have cut down the clutter and made the program more usable. Anyways, if you want to own this $20 software, proceed to the promotional page and submit your email ID to receive a free serial key.
Download the installer from this page.
[via gHacks]
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