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Sylvie Picquendar wondered: <<I am looking for a freeware to perform
screen captures on a MAC that possibly allows me to save files in the
gif format. I tried FreeSnap, but it does not allow to save as gif.>>
Apple provides a utility called "Grab" in OS X that does a decent job
of capturing screens. It's very primitive compared with professional
utilities, and you need to know how to change the preferred file
format. (This requires using the Terminal utility and mucking about in
Unix, so I haven't learned how to do this. A quick Google will probably
tell you, as will displaying the man page for Grab in Unix.) The key
thing is that you can change the format
The standard Mac equivalent to a pro Windows version such as SnagIt is
something called Snapz Pro
(http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/), but you'll have to
pay for it. If you're doing a lot of screen captures, the US$29 price
isn't too hard to take, particularly if someone else is paying for it.
(They also have a "classic" version for OS 9.) If you really, really
need a freebie, see what you can find at the Mac OSX download center:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
If you want a freebie solution, try combining Grab with Lemkesoft's
Graphic Converter (http://lemkesoft.com/en/index.htm) to convert the
Grab images into any format you'd like. GC is available free or paid,
but if you go for the free version, it records how long it's been since
you first installed the software and makes you wait proportionally
(possibly many minutes) before making the program tools available.
Still, it's kickass software, and not very expensive.
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