TNT has the least extensive and simplest interface of all the tools reviewed in this article. However, it is very well designed, and despite its simplicity, offers a range of features and options that will satisfy the needs of most authors.

TNT Screen Capture Evaluation Version

TNT Screen Capture home page



TNT user interface

Although relatively new to the screen capture market, TNT has introduced some innovative new features. For example, it was the first screen capture tool to offer a torn paper edge option, although this option is now also available in SnagIt 6.3. Another very nice innovation is the capture wizard, which is implemented using WinHelp 4’s Training Card functionality. This enables you to set the capture options and make the capture from the Help itself—it's a very effective demonstration of how online Help can actually be used as an extension of the user interface, and incidentally is the only implementation of Microsoft’s Training Card Help that I ever remember seeing (outside of its token usage within the UA for Microsoft Help Workshop).

TNT’s capture options are organized into two tabs: capture and image. However, due to small number of options in total, and the somewhat arbitrary allocation of options between these two tabs, the tabs are almost unnecessary.

The options, although relatively small in number, are well chosen. They enable a high degree of capture flexibility and they automate all the tasks of a typical screen capture. In addition to the standard options for capturing windows and rectangular regions, TNT supports the capture of fixed-size regions (useful for making a series of screen captures that all have the same size). It also enables you to set the capture region to a variety of different shapes—these include rounded rectangle, ellipse, and a selection of predefined shapes with “torn paper” edges, such as in the example below:


Example of torn paper capture

When you minimize TNT, it is not displayed on the Taskbar like a regular minimized application, but instead becomes an icon in the system tray. When TNT is present in the system tray, pressing the <Print Screen> button activates a TNT capture using the current settings.

Each time you initiate a capture, an information window appears that tells you how to select the required capture region—there is an option to prevent this window appearing again. To specify a capture region, you click and drag the left-hand mouse button to form the region—a small window appears showing the coordinates of the current cursor position, and a magnified view of a small area of the screen surrounding the cursor. This enables greater precision in defining the region. You complete the capture by clicking inside of the rectangle. This method is intuitive, and has the benefit of enabling you to tweak the region until it's correct before confirming the capture.

There is an option for applying an automatic zoom factor at capture, and this includes a number of different smooth-scaling algorithms from which you can select. In practice, however, it's always best to make screen captures without resizing (i.e., using a zoom factor of 100%).

A useful time-saving feature of TNT is the ability to save a set of capture settings as a named profile. This profile can then be set load automatically when you start TNT in the future. It should also be possible to load a specific profile at any time while using the product, but I could not get this to work successfully with the copy of TNT that I was evaluating.

Strengths

• Ease of use
• Wide range of capture types and settings
• Online Help that uses Training Card functionality to operate as a wizard

• No support for capturing individual buttons