Screen grab captured with Skitch

For someone who lives in an Apple household and loves the death out of Apple products, I have to admit that I’ve now spent so much time working on PCs in my professional life (never been self-employed) that I actually find myself having to learn/re-learn how to use a Mac.

We recently upgraded our home system – i.e., finally bought a new machine after way too many years. As I use it more and more, I’m finding that I now have to learn how to do things that have become second-nature to me on my work-supplied Windows machine.

Right now, I’m looking for the perfect utility for taking screen captures. I use the Microsoft Snipping Tool at work, not because I think it is fabulous but because it is what was installed for me by our support staff, and it meets my needs at work.

I need at least the equivalent of that at home, and I’m also looking for something that will do video screen captures. These don’t necessarily have to both come from one app; I might end up with two. The native Grab application that comes with the Mac just doesn’t have what I need. On the other hand, I’d rather find something free, rather than pay for a professional tool.

So far, I’m looking primarily at two options: Skitch, which I like both for its features and its integration with Evernote; and Jing, which has the video capture capability. Right now, I’m really liking Jing, which I used to make the following video and insert very easily here using embed code provided by Jing. Unfortunately, the video isn’t visible in Safari because it requires Flash, so that certainly is one downside of the Jing embed code.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your suggestions. Does anyone else have a favorite screen-capture utility for Mac?