Thanks to everyone who participated in Layers giveaway!

We have picked 2 lucky winners and they are…….

The Winners:

1. Brian N.
2. Carsten Langrock

The developer will be contacting you guys for your free licenses shortly. Congrats and I hope you enjoy using Layers!

For those who didn’t win this time, there are more giveaways coming up, the upcoming one is on Monday! So stay tuned!

Check out SUBERNOVA online project management tool:

I have seen lots of screen capturing tools, most of them lets you manage screenshots, do annotations etc. That’s cool, but none of them lets you capture screens like Layers. At least I have never came across one. We have 2 x free Layers license to giveaway, so read on to find out more about Layers and how to win it!

Meet Layers

Layers, created by wuonm provides sophisticated features eg. letting you deconstruct the whole screen grab into individual layers, hence the name.

No, nothing to do on your part, the app deconstructs the whole screen grab for you, while saving the entire bunch of separated windows into one well sorted Photoshop (.psd) file.

Photoshop Layers

As you can see on the left, each individual windows, icons are separated into different layers waiting for you to manipulate. There are many possibilities on what you can do with them. If you take screenshots often (like me), this is a great tool to keep!

Want More Control?

Not only can you take screenshots as one huge Photoshop file, Layers also includes its own Inspector for you to choose which window, icons etc to grab. To save an item, just select it from the list and hit “Save Screenshot”.

There are also many other options like applying shadows to your screenshot, grabbing the screenshot with an opaque background etc.

Dual Monitor Support

Layers also supports dual monitors, you can choose to select or omit any display screens from the shot.

Not Just Screenshots, Web Shots Too

With the latest update, you can even take web snapshots! With a click of the mouse, or keyboard shortcut, you can take a screenshot of the entire webpage of the current tab in your active browser. Works flawlessly. This feature makes it a almost complete tool for screen grabbing.

Settings

Don’t want to save screenshots in TIFF? Choose PNG instead, or vice versa. For me, I like using PNGs as it is more compatible with browsers (not mentioning IE6 and below though!).

Selecting “Capture options: Image Kind” will show 3 options – Layered PSD, a bunch of images or just a flat image?

I think these options are very well thought out, non designers would want a bunch of images or a composite while designers who knows Photoshop inside out would most probably choose Layered. Though, it still depend on individuals’ different needs. All in all there is an option for everyone.

Keyboard Shortcuts

To save more time, use keyboard shortcuts! As a complete application, developers can never leave that out. Here are a couple of frequently used actions that you can perform with keyboard shortcuts. Of course you can also modify them as you deem fit.

Dock & Menu Icon

For those worried about having too many icons cluttering up your dock (or is it just me?), there is a built in option to hide the dock icon or the menu icon! Small feature but very thoughtful!

Conclusion

With the ability to take desktop and web screenshots combined with the powerful features of deconstructing the entire screenshot, this makes Layers an awesome choice for your screen grabbing needs. If you want to read more, check out reviews from Macworld or Smoking Apples.

2 x License Giveaway!

The developer is generous enough to give 2 FREE licenses (usually $24.95) to SUBERAPPS readers! To win a license, all you need to do is to leave a comment and tell us why you want a copy of Layers.

The giveaway will run until Friday, so quickly leave a comment now to be entitled a chance to win this awesome app!

Check out SUBERNOVA online project management tool:

Here’s a lesser known feature about snapping screenshots of any window without having to use the crosshair to drag and select. Using this trick, you just need to focus the little camera icon on any window you want to snap a screenshot of. You don’t have to install any software, I have tested this on Leopard and Tiger and it works.

Focus the camera on one window,

to another.

How to do it?

1) Press “Cmd + Shift + 4″ on your keyboard
2) Press the “Spacebar” and you’ll see the camera icon enabling you to quickly snap windows

Have fun!

Check out SUBERNOVA online project management tool:

If you always find yourself taking screenshots on the web, on your desktop etc, so that you can post the pictures to your blog, you’ll find your desktop often clogged up with fragments of your screenshots. There are also countless reasons why we take screenshots, like annotating screenshots so that you can explain stuff more easily to your clients or friends.

LittleSnapper lets you organize your desktop mess by placing all your screenshots into it’s simple and elegant user interface. LittleSnapper is designed and built by Real Mac Software, who’re also behind RapidWeaver, so expect nothing less than fantastic design and user interface.

Where are your screenshots saved?

If my screenshots are not saved on my desktop, where are they saved? After some investigation, they’re actually stored neatly in your ~username/Library/Application Support/[username].lslibrary.

Any screenshot you delete will be deleted from this [username].lslibrary file.

So think of this little file as your “desktop” which stores all your screenshots in which you can manage them through LittleSnapper’s user interface.

What’s great about LittleSnapper?

- Screenshot management user interface. You can create folders on the left to organize your screenshots. Tagging and rating your screenshots are also possible using the panel on the right.

- Let’s you take full web pages (good for showing your clients work progress)

- Let’s you snap any window (forget about crosshair!)

- Let’s you snap a specific DOM element from any page (much like Safari Web Clips). You can only do this within LittleSnapper’s in-built web browser.

Annotation Tools

When comparing LittleSnapper to Skitch, I find that the annotation design elements for LittleSnapper are alot nicer, more “generic” in a sense that it does not look too “kiddish”. Other than letting you draw squares, circles, lines, arrows, texts, what is most helpful is letting you “highlight” certain portions of the screenshot (see below).

Highlight tool lets you highlight a portion of the screenshot and fades out the rest of the image:

You can also blur out certain portions of the screenshot extremely easily (good for blinding out passwords or other sensitive information you don’t want to share)

Other standard annotation tools

Uploading / Sharing via QuickSnapper, Flickr, SFTP or FTP

You probably know what’s FTP and Flickr by now. There’s also a “QuickSnapper” option where you can upload your screenshots to QuickSnapper.com. RealMacSoftware makes one of the most attractive web application for you to share your screenshots online.

Why no Resize?

LittleSnapper lets you crop your screenshots non-destructively, great, but there are no resize functions! Not sure why this feature is not included as it should be one of the most basic feature that should be included.

Otherwise, another example of an eye pleasing useful app. $39 and you’re a keeper.

Check out SUBERNOVA online project management tool: