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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

I recently switched from Windows to Mac for my main work computer. Paint.NET is the program I miss the most on a day-to-day basis. Does anyone have a recommendation for a similar program for common uses like e.g. screengrab a web page then put a 50% transparency yellow highlight on a portion I want to call out? I'm happy to pay, but know next to nothing about the Mac ecosystem.

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I like Pixelmator for Mac (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator/id407963104?mt=12). It is in between Paint.NET and Photoshop.

I also use Captur (http://cambhlumbulunk.blogspot.com/p/captur.html) for taking screenshots since I can never remember the obscure OS X shortcuts.

Before anyone runs off and grabs Pixelmator, see if Preview.app can do what you need. If you just need to highlight something in an image or add a note, it can do that.

If you need more, grab Pixelmator. It's an excellent program for basic image manipulation and drawing. If you need professional level tools, grab Paint Tool SAI, Photoshop, or GIMP as you need. Pixelmator will not be a good replacement for this programs.

The built in picture viewer (Preview.app) can do this:

* Click the pen in a box button next to the search bar. A new toolbar will appear.

* Click the rectangle button between the wand and the oval. Three new buttons will appear. If you mouse over them you can see what they do.

* Draw a rectangle around the area you want to highlight.

* Click the fill color button (it's right next to the border line thickness button)

* Choose "Show Colors..." from the color menu that pops down.

* Select any color and any opacity of that color to fill the rectangle

Here's a of keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots: http://support.apple.com/kb/ph11229 These shortcuts will put the images on the desktop.

I prefer to use a little tool call SnapNDrag to do screenshots. It's $10 on the app store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapndrag-pro/id430397512?mt... It's a simple app on top of the operating system's existing functionality. It's just a fancier version of the built in Grab.app.

(Also, if you haven't looked into Alfred or Quicksilver for app launching, I recommend it.)

Try Skitch [1], it's awesome. Example of yellow highlight:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s16/sh/0d23774d-cbb7-433d-8af...

1. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skitch-snap.-mark-up.-share....

You can try running VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox to run Windows and therefore Paint.NET :) I personally use Fusion and it's been great for purposes such as this.

You can try Pinta - http://pinta-project.com/download.ashx

I like this for Mac: http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/

You can do this in Preview.app. :)

Edited to add: BTW, Shift+Cmd+4 is a super useful shortcut from taking screen grabs on the Mac.

Honestly, I'd recommend Photoshop. It's just as fast to do that with Photoshop as any less-full-featured application, and there's the advantage of a) a whole lot more functionality beyond that and b) tutorials for anything you could ever want to do with it available on the Web.

Of course, it's not cheap, but I suspect you're more interested in the best rather than the cheapest tool.

Acorn for Mac is good also SVG-Edit http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.6/editor/svg-e...

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