Screen capture: evolved

Perhaps it’s only us old folks who remember a time when taking screenshots involved a kludgey and arcane process requiring multiple applications. It’s much easier these days to save an image of what’s on your display, but even OS X’s built-in tools leave room for improvement. Voila from Smith Micro is a one-stop solution for grabbing everything from simple screens to video, and it has some handy features that elevate it far beyond your Mac’s stock capture tools.

For screengrabs, Voila quite literally thinks outside the box, offering multiple tools for capturing images beyond the standard rectangle. You can use a circular marquee to highlight specific screen elements, construct a polygonal outline, or even define a freehand border as your capture. You’ll still end up with a rectangular boundary, but anything outside the desired area is rendered transparent. Voila lets you cherry-pick discrete elements, and when you need to capture a webpage, Voila’s built-in browser captures the whole thing.

Voila goes beyond the box to let you take custom screenshots.

Recording video is equally flexible. Whether you’re grabbing entire screens or just a specific selection, Voila lets you choose to record your computer’s audio or your own voiceover (with the built-in microphone or another audio device), and you can also decide whether you’d like to keep the cursor visible. That last feature is especially useful for creating tutorials, particularly when you’re narrating a complex set of steps. Using QuickTime, Voila easily converts captured video for use in websites, videos, and other projects.

Apple’s built-in capture tools dump everything on your Desktop, but Voila offers robust organization. Screengrabs are automatically grouped by type, and you can create your own Smart Collections by defining parameters such as Date, Description, Tag, URL, and more, similar to iTunes’ Smart Playlists. And sharing is simple. Voila exports to Flickr, iPhoto, Apple Mail, Entourage, and even FTP servers.

As if that weren’t enough, Voila has plenty of tools and effects for fine-tuning after your capture is done. You can add text, shapes, and other graphical elements; draw directly on your image with pencil or paint; add Gaussian or motion blur; and apply various filters, adjust color values, and spotlight sections for emphasis. Voila certainly isn’t a standalone image editor, but the built-in tools are great for simple tweaks.

The bottom line. If you’re hitting Command-Shift-4 more than once a week, there’s an embarrassment of riches in Voila. If you can’t capture it with Voila, you probably don’t need it.