Skitch for Mac

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on September 23, 2012

Anyone who needs lightweight screen-capturing and editing software will love Skitch for Mac. Although it lacks some of the tools -- such as mask and layer -- that you find in a high-end image editor such as Photoshop, its well-designed, intuitive interface guides you all the way through the quick and effective editing actions, and the result speaks for itself.

The app launches in a gray window with a white canvas in the center, while the outer borders contain all the available options, allowing you to perform a long list of actions. But since Skitch is centered around screenshots, you will first use the Snap button in the upper-right corner, which places crosshairs on the screen, allowing you to select the specific area you'd like to capture. We liked how the app uses information boxes to teach you about the available options; for example, it taught us that by pressing Shift during dragging, a 3-second countdown is activated. Also, the app displays the snapshot's width and height while dragging, which makes a great addition to the software, and useful information. In addition, you can use the Mac's iSight camera to snap a picture of yourself and save both the screenshot and the picture in a wide variety of popular formats for further editing, including the editable Skitch format.

The fun begins as soon as the snapshot is ready. You can choose from a variety of tools, and you can customize them at will. Skitch makes editing fun; you can add an arrow or various other shapes to the photo with one click, so you can point out something on a photo, but this is just the beginning.

Skitch for Mac goes beyond a basic screenshot tool by becoming a lightweight image-editing tool as well. Considering its sharing options, the app is a must-have for anyone who works with screenshots and needs basic image-editing tools all in one place.