Snagit has been the default answer to "how do I grab and mark up a screenshot at work" for something like two decades. It is a serious product from a serious company, and if you are already paying for it, most of this page will tell you to keep using it. What follows is about the narrow slice where a dedicated redaction tool does something different.
Everything below about Snagit comes from TechSmith's own documentation, linked inline. Where TechSmith does not document something, this page says so instead of guessing.
Give Snagit its due: it has real redaction
Snagit does not just hand you a blur brush and wish you luck. TechSmith's blur tutorial carries an unusually straight warning that most vendors would never print:
"Some third-party tools can reverse blur and pixelation. To secure confidential or sensitive information, select the Solid shapes option from the Type property dropdown and share as a JPG, GIF, PNG, PDF, or other flattened file type."
That is TechSmith telling you the thing this site has been saying for a year: blur and pixelation are not redaction. Credit where it is due — the guidance is correct, it is prominent, and it points at solid fill and a flattened output. Snagit's hide sensitive information tutorial repeats it and also documents deleting the region outright with auto-fill.
Snagit also has automatic detection. Smart Redact "automatically detects addresses, credit card numbers, dates, emails, faces, IP addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and URLs", with per-type toggles. That is a genuine feature and it is the closest thing to Blackbar in any mainstream capture tool.
Where the two tools actually diverge
Look at the two detection lists side by side, because that is the real difference and it is a factual comparison rather than an opinion.
Smart Redact's documented list is PII-shaped: addresses, cards, dates, emails, faces, IPs, phone numbers, SSNs, URLs. That is exactly right for a support screenshot, a training video, a customer-service recording, a marketing asset.
Blackbar's 27 detectors are infrastructure- and credential-shaped, because
it was built for security reports: AWS access keys, JWTs, bearer tokens, GitHub and Slack and
OpenAI-style API keys, private key blocks, NTLM hashes and secretsdump output,
Windows SIDs, database connection strings, internal hostnames and FQDNs, RFC1918-aware IPv4,
plus the PII types. Both lists include IP addresses; neither list is a superset of the other.
If your screenshots are terminal windows, Blackbar's list is the one that matches. If your
screenshots are CRM records, Snagit's is.
The layer question, stated carefully
TechSmith documents that Snagit annotations are vector objects you can keep editing, and
that .SNAGX stores them unflattened — that is a deliberate, useful feature, and
the file
and save tips page documents platform differences in when flattening happens (on Mac, a
non-SNAGX file is flattened when you quit Snagit; on Windows you can reopen and keep editing
both).
What TechSmith does not document anywhere I could find is whether the original
pixel data persists underneath a redaction object inside a saved .SNAGX project.
So this page does not claim that it does. It is simply unspecified — which is worth knowing if
you ever send a project file rather than an export, and is a question you can put to TechSmith
support directly.
The technique argument, not the vendor argument. An annotation drawn over pixels and a bitmap in which the pixels have been overwritten are two different operations. Flattening on export converts the first into something that looks like the second — and it usually works. The difference is that with an editable-object model the guarantee lives in the export step, and with a destructive model there is no other kind of export to get wrong.
Side by side
| Snagit | Blackbar | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Full capture and markup suite | Single-purpose redaction tool |
| Licensing | Subscription — TechSmith moved new purchases to annual subscription from 2025; perpetual licences no longer sold | $19 one-time, updates for the 1.x line |
| Platforms | Windows 10/11 and macOS 14+ | macOS 14+, Windows 10/11, Linux x86_64 & ARM64 — one licence |
| Automatic detection | Smart Redact: addresses, cards, dates, emails, faces, IPs, phone numbers, SSNs, URLs | 27 detectors, credential- and infrastructure-focused |
| API keys, JWTs, NTLM hashes, private keys | Not in the documented Smart Redact list | Yes |
| Faces | Yes | No |
| Blur guidance | TechSmith warns blur/pixelation can be reversed and recommends solid shapes | Opaque burn is the default; reversible styles warn inline |
| Editing model | Vector objects, editable; .SNAGX keeps them unflattened | Destructive burn into the bitmap on export |
| Consistent labels across shots | Not documented | Same value, same pseudonym, every screenshot |
| Scrolling capture, video, webcam | Yes | No |
| Network | Cloud sharing and account features | No network entitlement at all |
When to use Snagit instead
Snagit is better than Blackbar at nearly everything that is not this one operation:
- You need to capture, not just redact. Region, window, full screen and scrolling capture of a full web page or a wide data table. Blackbar can grab a region on macOS and Linux and stops there.
- Video and screen recording, including audio and picture-in-picture webcam. Blackbar does not record anything.
- Explanatory markup. Callouts, step numbers, arrows, stamps, templates — the whole vocabulary of documentation and training material.
- Your sensitive data is PII, and faces matter. Smart Redact covers faces and SSNs; Blackbar covers neither.
- Grab Text / Edit Text. Pulling text back out of a screenshot, and editing text in place, is a Snagit party trick with no Blackbar equivalent.
- It is already deployed and approved. Adding a second tool has a real cost.
When Blackbar is the better fit
When the screenshots are terminal output and admin consoles, when the secrets are keys and hashes and internal hostnames rather than customer names, and when the deliverable leaves your organisation with a client's name on it.
Blackbar's export rasterises the source, overwrites the redacted regions in the bitmap, encodes a brand-new image and strips all metadata — and a test in the build suite reads exported files back and asserts the original content is gone. There is one export path and it is the destructive one. It runs on Linux, which matters if your evidence is generated on Kali. It ships with no network entitlement, checked by macOS entitlement tests, which matters if the screenshots are covered by a scope agreement. And it costs $19 once rather than a seat renewal.
Many people should own both. Capture with Snagit, redact with Blackbar, ship the PNG.
Check it yourself, either way
# Is the string you redacted still in the exported file?
strings redacted.png | grep -i "dc01.corp.local"
# Did metadata survive?
exiftool redacted.png | head -40Whatever tool you use, run that once against your own workflow before you trust it with a deliverable. It takes thirty seconds and it beats every comparison page on the internet, including this one.
Prices and feature sets change — the licensing note above reflects TechSmith's published position at the time of writing, and techsmith.com is the authority on the current figure. Blackbar is $19.
Also worth reading: Blackbar vs macOS Preview and Markup and Blackbar vs CleanShot X.