Review: Captivate v4.6 by Mainstay

Reviewed by Eugene F. Marotta

Captivate consists of three essential utilities that are indispensable for use in working with a variety of graphic formats, such as: GIF, PICT, TIFF 4.0, TIFF 5.0, and MacPaint files. Captivate's suite of utilities can be used in conjunction with each other or used separately; they are:

 

• Captivate Select, a Control Panel Device, that lets you capture any part of the screen including pull-down menus, dialog boxes, and windows -- or the entire screen on one or more monitors. Images can be scaled by selecting a percentage setting prior to capture. You can even set a delay to catch images on screen. The captured image can be placed on the Clipboard, Scrapbook, or saved in a desired folder using any one of the above mentioned formats.
• Captivate View is a graphics viewing, manipulation, conversion and printing utility. It displays, prints and converts to any of the following formats, GIF, PICT, TIFF or MacPaint file. Also, it can be used to save a file as a Macintosh startup screen or a stand-alone file that can be viewed at any time. If your dealing with images on the Windows platform you assign ".GIF,' ".PIC," and ".TIFF" suffixes to Captivate View, this is accomplished by using System 7.5's PC exchange. You are able to see a great deal of information about the image's, using the Information box, memory size, magnification, dimensions or depth information (number of bits).
• Captivate Store organizes, stores and retrieves graphics, text, sounds and QuickTime Movies at any time, in any application. Create your own key combination to display a hierarchical menu of all your stored Captivate File. Highlight a folder to display its files, highlight a file to preview its contents --graphics, text, sounds, or a QuickTime movie. To instantly paste the contents of a file in your current document, highlight it and release the mouse button. you can save the Clipboard contents to Captivate Store the same way or add items to folders at the Finder level. If the Clipboard contains text, it can even be edited before storing.
• What's New in Version 4.6 The program has been enhanced to allow Power Mac users to capture the cursor (currently, this is something no other screen capturing program can handle). Also, Captivate Select now offers the option of capturing the active window.

  Conclusion. Captivate's versatile and it easy to use features makes putting graphics on projects needing illustrations, such as: cards, flyers, letters, newsletters a snap. Assign any key combination you desire to quickly activate a screen capture. Captivate's installation is straight forward. The User's Guide is well written providing you with easy to how to get the most out of and customizing Captivate. Captivate is a top notch utility that will put an end to using assorted piece meal utilities to do the job.

  Product Information Mainstay 591-A Constitution Ave. Camarillo, CA 93012 805-484-9400 / credit card 1-800-484-9817 (Code 6366) E-Mail at -- Mainstay1@aol.com / CIS: 76004,1525

  Retail: $89.95 (exclusive of shipping charge or applicable tax in Calif.) **NOTE** Special offer in November, price for Captivate is $69; check to see if any special offer might be available for the month of December. The upgrade price from version 4.5 is $20. The upgrade price from any earlier version is $35.

  Minimum System Software Requirements: System 7.0 or later, any monitor or combination of monitors, including 32 bit color monitors, 1 MB disk space to install Captivate utilities and sample files and 3.5" disk drive to install Captivate