xScope 2.0

Jerid, if you can click and drag a selection accurately by hand to within one pixel with command-shift-4 on the desktop, more power to you. You'd be the first person I know that this wouldn't either

A) take multiple attempts

B) take more than 30-90 seconds to get right

xScope's dimensions tool gets it right instantly every time. All I'm saying is don't discount the time it takes to get pixel accurate measurements. I know from years of experience it's difficult.

This is a great addition, I'd say it's worth the price and I'd actually pay more with the time it'll save my department. I typically have to take a screen shot of the browser, open that up in photoshop, take a measurement (for the anal pixel accuracy I need)... but this does it system wide, and fairly quickly. So, like they figured out above, CS3 does not do this system wide, it's unique to xscope.

Measuring something on screen doesn't happen often. And when it does, you don't need a program to do it.

Hold in Apple / Shift / 4 and your cross hair comes up. Click and drag on anything you want to measure and it gives you on screen measurements. It will create an image of what you just captured, but that can easily be thrown in the trash. Hassle, maybe, but I measure on screen rarely, and when I do, a couple of seconds to throw my screen shot in the trash doesn't bother me.

This is a lovely bit of software but there are some similar and very useful facilities in the freeware pixelstick http://www.pixelatedsoftware.com/products/pixelstick/index.html

I hate when people say "not worth the money". If it's not worth it to _you_, simply don't buy it. I, as a web developer, have been using 1.5 almost daily since it came out, and upgraded ($10) to 2.0 after reading this. The new features will make it even more useful. I have to do this sort of measuring all the time.

It's a useful tool, and saves a lot of time compared to the many other ways you could do this (e.g. Photoshop). Whether the time saved is worth the cost of the software is up to each of us. For me, it is.

I spoke too soon.

This is a system-wide function, not just inside CS3. That's actually pretty cool, I could certainly use the "know size of images on the fly" thing, but the widths of other things would be...superfluous.

But that's just me.

And the CS3 version supports multi-dimensional objects as well.

You simply enter in a known value (or measurement) for one of the sides of the things you are measuring, and it tells you the dimensions of any other part based on the value you entered.

I know it's mighty costly, but CS3 already has this feature built in.

I'm sure plenty of people don't want to pony up the cash for Adobe's latest juggernaut, but it's nice to know that it's in there anyway.

It's neat, but not $27 neat.

Rad little piece of software...

Wow that woman in the video is a bit annoying with her serious saliva sticky mouth noises.