I've tried all the disk image creation apps I could find, and DropDMG is the only one that stayed on my HD. Nothing comes close.

Versatility. DropDMG lives up to it's name. A clever drop-menu in the app's small window selects a preset disk image type, for which there exists a plethora of options that puts Disk Utility to shame. One cool feature that's not so apparent: drop ANY format disk image file onto DropDMG, and DropDMG will convert the image to whatever type is preset, then recompress the image. If it is the same type of image as your preset, DropDMG will still recompress the image, which in most cases will result in a smaller image because DropDMG is so efficient. I tried this with .dmg files created with DropDMG's competitors, and in every case, DropDMG encoded a smaller .dmg file!

Speed. This newer version freakin' SCREAMS. I thought something went wrong until I checked the dmg file. A quick stopwatch comparison demonstrated that v277 creates a .dmg file faster than the v260 I previously had installed, and even faster than Apple's Disk Utility. Compression was as good as Disk Utility for the files I tested.

Support. Registration was a cinch and the apps never so much as hiccuped during the years I've used it.

Price. I almost didn't try DropDMG because of the price, and what a mistake that would have been. There are many free alternatives to DropDMG, but none of them are as fast, none of them compress files as efficiently (they've all got higher compressed:original file size ratios), and none have such a rich and luxurious feature set. DropDMG is well worth the $15 I paid for it.

It is a shame that Apple dropped the Disk Copy utility from OS X, which at least offered rudimentary drag and drop .dmg creation. As the greatest honor to DropDMG, I suggest that Apple should incorporate DropDMG into OS X. It's one of those apps that, once you grow accustomed to it, you cannot imagine using OS X without it.