Review: Captivate 4.6
Product Information:
Mainstay 591-A Constitution Ave. Camarillo, CA 93012
1-800-484-9817 (Code 6366)
E-Mail: Mainstay1@aol.com / CIS: 76004,1525
Retail: $89.95
Upgrade from any earlier version for $35.
Requirements:
System 7.0 or later
1 MB disk space to install Captivate utilities and sample files
Captivate consists of three essential utilities that are indispensable for use in working with a variety of graphic formats. Captivate's suite of utilities can either be used separately or together. They are:
- Captivate Select, a Control Panel Device that can capture any part of the screen including: pull-down menus, dialog boxes, and windows — or the entire screen on one or more monitors. Images can be scaled by first selecting a percentage setting then performing the capture. You can even set a delay to catch images on screen. Captured images can be placed into the Clipboard, a Scrapbook, or saved in a designated folder. Images can be saved in any of the following formats: GIF, PICT, TIFF 4.0, TIFF 5.0, or MacPaint file format.
- Captivate View is a graphics viewing, manipulation, conversion and printing utility. It displays, prints or converts files to any of the above-mentioned formats. It can save a file as a Macintosh startup screen or as a stand-alone file that can be viewed at any time. If you're dealing with images in Windows, you assign ".GIF," ".PIC," and ".TIFF" suffixes with Captivate View and System 7.5's PC exchange. Using View's Information box, you can see a file's memory size, magnification, dimensions or depth information (number of bits).
- Captivate Store organizes, stores and retrieves graphics, text, sounds and QuickTime Movies at any time, in any application. Create your own key combination to display a hierarchical menu of all your stored Captivate Files. Highlight a folder to display its files, highlight a file to preview its contents — graphics, text, sounds, or a QuickTime movie. To instantly paste the contents of a file in your current document, simply highlight it and release the mouse button. Using the same method, you can save Clipboard contents to Captivate Store or add items to folders at the Finder level. If the Clipboard contains text, it can even be edited before storing.
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What's New in Version 4.6
The program has been enhanced to allow Power Mac users to capture the cursor (currently, this is something no other screen capturing program can handle). Captivate Select 4.6 offers the option of capturing the active window.
Conclusion
Captivate's versatile and easy to use features make putting graphics into projects needing illustrations (such as: cards, flyers, letters, newsletters) a snap. Assign any key combination you desire to activate a screen capture. Captivate's installation is straight forward. The User's Guide is well written and makes it easy to customize and get the most out of the software. Throw out that piecemeal collection of utilities! Captivate is a topnotch utility that provides an integrated solution to graphics manipulation.
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This review is ©1996 Eugene F. Marotta. http://home.earthlink.net/~emarotta/
Reader Comments (2)
If it's to happen, you'll need to contact Mainstay via the web site I mentioned, but I'd recommend looking for another solution. Roxio's Toast Titanium 5 includes a software utility called iView. Toast is pretty much a must-have utility for anyone with a CD burner anyway, so iView may be the perfect—and free—solution for you.
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