14 DAY TRIAL // $14.99. That is all it would cost you to get your hands on the latest Ashampoo magical Snap. It is not a defragmenter, a computer optimizer, CD/DVD burner, firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware or such. It is a simple tool that can take screenshots. Quite a trivial instrument some would say, but I advise checking it out before making further affirmations.
Indeed, it is not equipped with who knows what out of this world features, there is no "never heard of" technology involved. But all those options and features available in similar softwares are wrapped up really nice. I spent about half an hour just wondering about the effort to create such interface. It all stands in the interface.
I guess you are already used to the innovations Ashampoo brings with each redesign of the interface, no matter the product it is for. Well, this time, they have outdone themselves. Vista has imposed such high graphical standards that few developers can boast with reaching them. Ashampoo Magical Snap is one of those applications that integrate in Vista perfectly.
There is no traditional interface and the software will practically occupy the entire desktop. You will see nothing but the snapped picture from your desktop. The options are docked on the sides of the screen and in the upper and lower parts. The only hint that there are some options available is the wizard that tells you where to go and what to do and some thin colored lines.
Magical Snap will reside in system tray and all the snapping options can be accessed from here, but a cooler way to do it is move the mouse on the red line in the upper part of the desktop. The five desktop capturing options docked in that window include capturing a scrolling window (both text and web page), capturing a single window, capturing a free region and a fixed region. Configuration settings are also residing in here.
The three bars available spread on all four sides of your desktop. Action Bar available in the right hand part of the screen allows the user to save the capture, print it, email it, copy it to the clipboard, or erase it. The action is executed immediately no questions asked. The tooltips for each action describe what it does exactly.
Mouse Tool Bar is spread on two sides of your desktop: bottom and left side. It is designed to help you in editing the capture in order to improve it or make certain elements stand out. Colors are to be found under the bottom line of the screen, while on the left there are the tools to draw text or rectangles, a highlight tool to mark areas out and even a spotlight effect tool (my favorite).
Image Bar is docked in the upper part of the screen. The functions incorporated here contain undo/redo option, zoom in/out, rotation options (90 degrees to the left/right), mirror effect, flip, resize capture or renaming it. The three effects included can surround the entire image with a drop shadow (Drop Shadow effect), make it look as if it had been drawn with a pencil (Pencil Drawing) or grayscaling it (Grayscale effect).
There aren't very rich options available, but their quality is superior and the resulting image will be crystal clear. The way Ashampoo managed to wrap all the features up is also to be appreciated.
The options of the application can be activated from the "ceiling" docked window or from the context menu of the icon in system tray. They cover general settings like enabling the software to start with Windows and the hotkeys, choosing your desired skin (contrary to my expectations, Vista is not the coolest of them and I would rather go with the default theme), make the settings for Mouse Tools 1 (antialiasing, draw shadow, shadow color/intensity/direction/offset/dither, set the width and corner of the ellipse, pencil and marker tool). Mouse Tools 2 settings covers the configuration of the tools in the Mouse Tool Bar (draw arrow, line tool, highlight tool, eraser, spotlight and callout tool) and the colors to be used.
Moving to Capture tab or the software Settings you can change the default save folder, the output format of the file (Magical Snap supports only JPG, BMP and PNG), the background and shadow color etc.
The software is absolutely amazing in terms of presentation of the options and features. The drawback is that the effort invested was too much compared to the features, effects, editing tools etc. However, the application is cheap enough and if I remember correctly the promotion campaign from Ashampoo, you may catch the product at a very low price.
The Good
Hat off for the interface. As always, Ashampoo knows how to wrap the lines of code composing their softwares.
The quality of the image is absolutely amazing and the effects truly deserve testing. Magical Snap is extremely easy to use and for home use it is perfect.
The Bad
As always, Ahampoo fails to correct the spelling and I still caught a slip. The erasing tool is misspelled both in the software and in the help file. Or, I may be wrong and the developer may have decided to call it different.
The flash-like interface does not allow any intrusion from other windows open in the taskbar and in order to toggle them you will have to wrap up your work in Magical Snap. Once you take a capture, there will be room for nothing else.
The Truth
My sincere opinion is that it is eye-catchy, but fails in providing a suite of editing tools worthy of Ashampoo. Despite the limited number of features and options it sports, for home use it deserves a chance.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
