When comparing Irfanview vs Snagit, the Slant community recommends Snagit for most people. In the question“What are the best screen capture tools for Windows?” Snagit is ranked 4th while Irfanview is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Snagit is:
Allows you to adjust the capture, add captions and symbols (arrows, boxes etc).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Some editing tools included (cropping, color correcting, etc...)
Pro Lots of plugins available
Plugins can be found here.
Pro Batch processing
Even exif information can be batch processed.
Pro Recognizes virtually any image format
Pro You can just scroll with your mouse to explore images
Pro Ultra fast
If you press and hold the right-arrow button (for displaying the next image), you can watch images pass by as if they are a video, it's that fast. No stuttering, it loads images as fast as your hard drive can keep up.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Can use 8bf (Photoshop) filters
Pro Easy updates
Very easy to update the program and its associated plugins.
Pro Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer is a convenient way to view all image files easily
Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer is a great way to view thumbnails of all image files, including thumbnails of WMF files which Windows cannot natively display.
Pro Includes an image editor
Allows you to adjust the capture, add captions and symbols (arrows, boxes etc).
Pro Good markers for setting the capture area
Simple to choose between full-screen, window or a selected area.
Pro Can easily add annotations
The editor allows you to quickly and easily mark and annotate the screen capture.
Pro Can capture screen video
Pro Integrates with third party services
Google drive, Twitter, Facebook, email etc.
Pro Allows for delayed capture
Allows you to arrange the screen as you want it captured. Things like opening a popup menu, to have it part of the capture.
Pro Can capture editable text
Just about any text on the screen can be editable text. I say "just about" because it's like OCR software in that unusual and extra fancy fonts or text against a low contrast background may be a challenge. But overall it works in most situations.
Pro Mobile app for easily moving screenshots from smartphone to Snagit's editor
Cons
Con GIF viewing is buggy
GIF viewing has longstanding problems like flickering, incorrect framerate or artifacts, and it is very unlikely that it will be ever fixed.
Con Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer crashes on accessing AVI files
For some reason, the Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer crashes when it tries to access any .AVI movie file.
Con No transparency support
The alpha is converted to the selected background color upon opening a picture. When saving the picture again, you can select a color which is converted to alpha again.
Con Missing some utilities
Like browsing files utility.
Con Preferences are hard to find
Con Windows only
Con UI is far from ideal
Sometimes the interface is confusing.