There may be times when you want to capture a screen of notation or something else and paste it into another program or save in a graphic file format. I do a lot of screen capture for my posts on this blog and in my work and teaching. I’ve found that using a 3rd party screen capture application provides advantages. It can make the screen capture process faster and offer you more options for saving and sharing. Another advantage to using 3rd party screen capture is some programs lock out the built-in screen capture (such as SmartMusic www.smartmusic.com).  With 3rd party programs, you can override and take screen captures as needed.

Both Mac and Windows have built-in screen capture options.

Mac Screen Capture

On Mac, I use SnapsPro X for most of my screen capture and video capture needs. It costs $69 and there is a free trial available.
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Check out the tutorial video on how to customize your screen capture.
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/videos/

Windows Screen Capture

On Windows, I use Snagit!
http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html

Another option on Windows is Jing
http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

There are other shareware and freeware screen capture software applications.  These are the ones I have found helpful and worth the money.