The same goes for anyone who regularly has to use presentations and other graphical displays to share information. ZoomIt aims to make presentations and annotations easy enough for anyone to illustrate and add comments and annotations to their presentations and screenshots. The first time you run ZoomIt, you're presented with a configuration dialog that gives you some tips on what the program can do and how it should be used. During this time, you're also offered the chance to specify alternate hotkeys for zooming in and out and for entering drawing mode without zooming. In addition, you can customise the drawing pen color and size although this is one aspect where ZoomIt could do with some work as both the sizes and colour palette is rather limited. There's also what the program calls a "break timer" that remains active even when you tab away from the timer window but then allows you to return to the timer window by clicking on the ZoomIt tray icon.

This is by no means the most advanced screen annotation utility you'll ever use but for simple arrow pointing and circling of certain facts and figures, it does a quick and efficient job.

Download ZoomIt 2.2 in Softonic

The program doesn't require installation. It features a wide range of options, with which to zoom in the entire desktop, an active window or just the area below the cursor.

The downside to it is that there are so many possibilities that the interface seems a bit confusing. Also, I find that sometimes the zoom effect is difficult to control, especially when zooming the whole desktop.

DesktopZoom magnifies your screen and lets you see things in detail.

Download DesktopZoom 2.1 in Softonic

Luckily you can now use Dragnifier to get up-close and personal with Windows. This easy-to-use magnifying glass lets you increase the size of any selected area on the screen, just by clicking on the program's icon in the taskbar and dragging it over the area you want to zoom in.

Dragnifier doesn't require installation and is really simple to use. It offers support for customizable keyboard shortcuts (no support for mouse combinations though), includes an optional grid for on-screen pixel measurement and features several zoom power levels. You can also choose among different lens designs.

The weird thing about Dragnifier is that, though it lets you change the zoom value while the magnifying glass is active, the only way to do it is by using the + and - keys on the numeric pad - certainly not a very comfortable key combination.

With Dragnifier you can easily zoom into any area on the computer screen.

Download Dragnifier 2.5 in Softonic

This tiny 51KB program doesn't need installation, so you can keep it on a portable drive if you want. It has a small window, with a zoomed view of wherever your mouse is pointing. The zoom can be set anywhere from 2x to 50x if you're dealing with super high resolution images. When you've found the point you need, clicking will freeze MouseZoom, so you can note the RGB value. You can also see hexadecimal color values if you choose.

This is a fairly old program, and while it functions perfectly, it's not really attractive. This is countered by its tiny size. It won't bother your processor a bit. It's a shame you can't copy/paste the RGB or hexadecimal values to the clipboard, but otherwise it's difficult to see what it is missing.

For anyone who need to color match, MouseZoom is a really quick and easy way to get exactly the right shade.

Download MouseZoom 1.4 in Softonic