Mac OS X comes with a good screenshot utility called “Grab”. It lets you snapshot anything you see on screen and save it to a file. This is good for sharing quick snapshots in a report, e-mail, or blog. The problem is Grab only saves in a TIFF format. This large file format (high resolution) is good for printing, but not too good for e-mail, and useless on the web.

Ambrosia Software, makers of terrific games we’ve been playing on Macs for decades, makes a utility that puts Grab to shame. Snapz Pro X not only helps you grab a piece of photo or graphic, but you can add borders and effects on the fly and save the result in any format. (Typically jpg for photos and gif for graphics.)

The $29 version does everything I need. But the $69 will let you record movies, portions of movies, or just anything happening on the screen. This would be good for computer training videos or recording pieces of Uncle Bob’s homemade DVDs. (Of course it would be bad to record rented movies, but Snapz does that good.)

Having a good screenshot utility may be the easiest way to quickly share one or two photos so you do not have to get into exporting, resizing, etc.

Kelly and Claire will enjoy using SnapZ Pro X…