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Introduction
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On the standard Windows operating system, pressing the Print-Screen key will copy an image of the entire screen to the clipboard, holding the Alt key and pressing the Print-Screen key will capture the currently selected window. If you're using Vista or Windows 7, it's pre-installed with a screen capture utility. Other operating systems may offer a similar utility for screen capture too. As an alternative to the utilities come with the OS, the freeware products in this review cover most of the following useful features and functionalities needed by the users.
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Discussion
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A right click on the tray icon shows a context menu for capturing full screen, active window, window control, rectangular, fixed or freehand region. Auto-scroll, dual monitors and sound effect are supported. No delayed capture setting is probably needed as users have a chance to make, for example, a window current before pressing the Print-Screen key. The screenshot can be saved into a file with an auto-save option, copied to the clipboard or directed to PicPick Image Editor included in the program for resizing or editing the image right away. This program completes with extra functionalities which include color picker, screen ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard, etc. On the downside, drawing objects are flattened and not movable in the editor. Capturing of the scrolling window is found not working well with the Chrome browser. |
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It allows for setting transparent background (untick 'flatten background') and saving in png format with the alpha channel, good for capturing a window with round corners or in non-square shape (as tested on XP). Auto scroll is supported but performs slower than PicPick. The program has a main window including a thumbnail browser and an image editor with comprehensive tools for resizing, cropping, adding text, border, shadow, frame, arrow and highlight, etc. Creating a pre-defined thumbnail is just one-click away and image files can be saved in various formats. A lot of options and settings including full object-editing tools and clipart library are available to the program for more advanced users. Moreover, external tools can be accessed from this program with proper configuration. Upon running the program, the user is required to register and get a free license key to remove a nag message. |
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It snaps full screen, active windows, control objects, fixed size or selected regions. Scrolling windows is featured but it does not work well with Firefox and Chrome when tested. It has a tabbed image viewer and editor, allowing for cropping, resizing, text annotations, arrows, stamps, highlights and other drawing tools, and saving images in various formats. |
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The application allows for taking full screen, rectangular region and multiple screens, but it has no detection of window objects. Scrolling window can be captured by manually scrolling down the window after the "Delayed Capture" is pressed, a pretty good idea although auto scrolling would be preferred. An image editor is included in the program for basic editing tasks, e.g. cropping, resizing, adding text or shapes and marking. |
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The program supports optional delayed snaps and periodic screenshots via Auto Capture, but it does not allow for freehand captures and detection of scrolling windows. The captured images can be added with text or image watermarks, and edited with the built-in image editor or pre-set external editors. Some extra features include a color picker, language translator and drag-and-drop window. |
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A simple image editor is included for adding arrows, text, frames and highlights. Surprisingly, it currently offers to save the file in png format only. What's more? It completes with an on-screen video recorder which is reviewed in Best Free Screen Session Recorder. This is a good choice if you need a screen capturer with a session recorder. |
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Looking for a screen capture tool for Linux?
The captured screenshot can be edited with a simple inbuilt DrawingTool for adding text, highlights, floating arrows, etc. and executing the included plugins such as resize, 3D rotate, watermark, shadow, soft edge, torn paper, jigsaw piece and other special effects. Shutter can also be linked to an external editor such as GIMP Image Editor for advanced editing. It supports upload or autosave in various formats. On the down side, Shutter does not feature auto-scroll capture but relies on Gnome Web Photographer to generate full-size image files and thumbnails from web pages and html files. |
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Others
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These are a number of other applications for screen capture. Some were brought up in comments here or noted from other sources. As they are not rated in this review, I am listing them here with brief descriptions and relevant links for ease of reference.
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Have Your Say
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2.1.2 
Unrestricted Freeware 
Win XP, Vista, Windows7
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Editor
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This article is maintained by volunteer editor Jojoyee. Registered site users are allowed to edit and improve this article wiki-style. |
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Tags
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capture screen, print screen, free screen capture, screen shot, screenshot, thumbnail, capture screen tool, capture screen utility |
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If you want to screen capture automatically while playing games in full-screen:
http://autoscreen.sourceforge.net/
i personally liked Jing but do not use it because of two drawbacks:
can only save files in one format which means taking time to have to change the format if desired; also that though i like having a file name automatically given while saving an image, you have to wait a minute or so before saving another image or it will be assigned the same file name.
screenrip32 is a good choise http://www.snapfiles.com/get/screenrip.html
Doesn't work.
Signo (www.kerkia.com), the hotkey manager/utility, also includes a comprehensive screen capture utility. It seems to lack auto-scroll but does everything else and with a very configurable approach. Also one thing it does that other utilities seem to lack is the ability to send the capture to Team Foundation Server work items, very useful if you happen to work with this Microsoft development environment.
An easy to use screen capture tool , http://horizon33.weebly.com/
Thanks for mentioning Horizon33 which offers some basic features. Added in Others Section.
I can't get a clean uninstall of PicPick :(
After reading this article, I gave PicPick a try. But I think I will uninstall it again for the following reasons:
* When capturing a web page from firefox the autoscroll works vertically but not horizontally.
* When you capture an active window, it captures only that part of the window that is currently visible on the screen. So if anything happens to fall outside the borders of the screen, then it is not captured.
Could NOT get PicPick to copy to email. The "Support" website is a useless mess. Maybe it's just me, but I'm rather persistent, tried several times and different ways, and this ain't my first rodeo. Did I miss something??
PicPick supports output to the Editor, clipboard, save to file and auto save. If I'm not mistaken, I don't think it has a feature to auto attach the screenshot to an email client. This would have to do manually, i.e., attach the image file that you saved from PicPick.
A notable alternative: Jing, by Techsmith
http://www.techsmith.com/
Already mentioned :)
Personally I like the last freeware version of FastStone Capture (version 5.3) that is available here. The main reason is that I like to add annotations with arrows and text to screen shots. FastStone Capture does that. Version 5.3 is available here:
http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/mmedia/FastStoneCapture.html
George
I keep looking for something Better than FS capture, but I always end up going back. I'm trying out PicPick... Seems pretty good, if you don't mind the limited output. Otherwise it seems to have the best features of FS capture and MWSnap.
But thanks for posting the info on FS capture. I give it a big nod for the drawing features and how polished the app is. Very, VERY good since it is so easy to use.
zscreen is a must! really great program.
Really happy to see the list here. I have used ScreenShot Captor for a long time and can say it is a great program. I am disappointed that the worst that can be said about it is that it must be registered...If you look into it, you find it really isn't a registration in the traditional sense. You just have to go to the site and request a key - that way the author does not have his freeware ripped-off. Well, that is my take on it anyway. The worst part about it, in my opinion is it isn't exactly easy to use compared to the other alternatives. Of course it does more than most of them too. To each his/her own. The best part that was left out, however, is it supports external tools. Maybe it doesn't have the ruler/protractor/super-great-perfect-tool-thingy going for it, but it has the next best thing (sometimes the best thing): You can access your favorite tool and utilize it from within the program! This is an under-appreciated feature that I noticed was not even mentioned. For the few features missing (most notably a ruler for me), you can add it to your external tools and make it immediately available. That said, PicPick sounds very worth looking into.
Thanks for valuable comments. Mentioning of the external tools that can be configured with Screenshot Captor is added.
CopySafe prevents most screen captures. Do any of these programs work when CopySafe is used?
If i want to capture pages in a website by doing scrolling down till the last page,how do i do it.
I am a n00b here
Assuming you're using PicPick, right click at the tray icon brings up the context menu (as shown in the article).
Select Screen Capture, then Capture Window Control, move the mouse to the left of the scroll bar, ("Auto Scroll" will appear under Output Type in a small window), press Print-Screen key. You'll see that PicPick automatically scrolls the page until the end and captures the full page.
Hope this helps.
"Grab Capture Screen" ? Ever hears of it? I have had it for years now, and it works marvelously. I believe it's no longer available. Thanks for PickPick Gizmo! Never heard of it before...Shows just what a fantastic and appreciated service you render us guys, and how much we appreciated the creators of geed freeware! We are grateful to you.
To me, problem with Picpick is : do not save in pdf format! And I don't want to have to run one more application to save it in this format. So I'll continue using Solid Capture.
Screenshot Captor which is freeware supports pdf output. Solid Capture is excluded from the review as it is commercial software.
This review has been re-written with a new top pick. Your continued comments and suggestions are appreciated.
I didn't see it on the first pageful of comments, and since it's relatively new, I'm betting it's not on the 2nd or 3rd (and if it is, then I apologize for the repeat)...
...but I just learned (maybe it's been around for a while and I just missed it or something) about Extensoft's freeware screen capture utility that is very nice as a screen capturer; however, it also doubles as an animated capturer (or "screen recorder"), too... like Wink or Cam Studio.
Seems well worth a look.
http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_screen_capturer
__________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
gregg [at] greggdeselms.com
Napa, California
DesElms - THANKS for the link!! It works very nicely, very simple and fast, directly to Outlook Express, too. Never could get PicPick to transfer to email, directly or indirectly, maybe I missed something. Nice little gadget!!
Lowndes
It shows me a total white page.
Same here - blank white page, even from the main domain address?
Thank you for those who introduced Picpick here. I appreciate the heads up very much.
- Free I Enough
Some of us just press the "Print Screen" button and paste the resulting screen image into any photo editor...
Each of the suggested screen captures mentions that they are not compatible with 64 bit. Has anyone tried any of them anyway on a 64 bit machine? I use Windows 7 - 64 and Vista Ultimate-64. I have no problem with doing the print screen then paste to an editor but I sometimes need to capture more than what’s visible on the screen.
Apparently PicPick is Vista 64.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/free-multi-function-screen-captu...
I think you misunderstood the article, or I have misunderstood you, but the article inferred that all Windows OS between 2000 and Vista 64 are supported (this includes the 32bit versions of XP and Vista).
Yes, you have misunderstood! The OP enquired about which screen captures are compatible with Win7 64 and Vista 64. PicPick is Vista 64 bit compatible according to the article. Maybe it will then also work with Win7?
Ah, sorry, did not focus there.
Not every situation fits that usage did that ever occur to you? Maybe that is why all these developers have spent the time to write programs to help in those situations. < head getting slapped >
Another vote for PicPick. It has all the tools necessary, and the "Whiteboard" feature is really nifty.
However, if I want a command line interface, I use the screenshot function bundled in nircmd. I've got an autohotkey script set up to automatically save a screenshot to a specified directory every five seconds. Useful!
Oh... hey... I was coming here to post about PicPick... and look, someone beat me to it.
Well, that's cool.
I've always been a FastStone lover, myself. But I read about PicPick over at LifeHacker, downloaded it last night, and I'm in love... er... well... at least so far. As with anything new, time will tell.
But I've already used the screen capture part twice just since last night. And the guy who wrote it even has a preset so that the shortcut keys can be set to mimic FastStone's default shortcuts... so people switching (like me) will feel right at home.
Plus, though it's not part of this category, it allows me to eliminate both a standalone ruler, and a standalone protractor app that I've been using for years... meaning a net reduction of one icon on my system tray.
And never in a million years would I have believed I'd ever use PicPick's built-in graphics editor for anything... but last night, in the time it would have taken me to load Paintshop Pro, then navigate to and open the file, I was able to annotate the screen capture with a note and an arrow pointing from said note to the thing on the screen that the note was about, then save it. Wham, bam, thankyoumaam.
I dunno 'bout the rest of you, but MY screen capture utility just became PicPick. It's that good. If it's also stable and doesn't crash things, then I'm stickin' with it. Of COURSE something like FastStone does more... but not ENOUGH more to make me ignore PicPick.
Now, if PicPick were also a clipboard viewer/manager/editor, it would be the PERFECT system tray product (and would let me eliminate yet another icon thereon.
Hey... one can DREAM, can't one?
I primarily use FastStone myself and just gave the image editor of PicPick a run through.
I did like that in re-sizing images it does not force you to adjust height when you just want to adjust width (as Fast Stone does). Images here at Gizmo's are limited to 500 pixels in width, so I often have to re-size.
I did like that PicPick had an eraser, which I could not find in FastStone.
I did not like the way it handles annotating as you can not move the text (and I assume arrows). For text and other drawing, I prefer FastStone as you can move them.
I did not try it for capturing as I already had the images.
me too another vote -PicPick
It's seriously cool, isn't it?
Amazing.
Now, repeat after me: "Dear Lord, please make PicPick's developer add a clipboard extender/viewer/editor/manager capability. Dear Lord, please make PicPick's developer add a clipboard extender/viewer/editor/manager capability. Dear Lord, plea..." Etc., etc.
[grin]
Hi DesElms, I agreed with you. You might also want to leave a prayer to ask for this feature at their Support Center :>)
To the author of this entry:
Please consider the already mentioned, completely portable and free little gem PicPick
I am always interested in new programs, especially when they have added value. I have been looking at Bug Shooting, per Gizmo's hearty recommendation. However, I am puzzled by the alien nature of the program. As the saying goes, "Alien minds are alien", and this program lives up to this quote. Who is the author? Is he Russian? Is he German? Or is he from another world?
Perhaps I will get to know this program better,.......with time. But as of now it is,......well, alien to me. There is no 'help' area where I can read about the program. The tutorial is a bit....strange.
Gizmo is correct: Bug Shooting will be a force to reckon with. But right now, it Needs to smooth the edges and perhaps get someone, who is familiar with the English language. In the meantime, colour me a bit perplexed here.
Interesting comments, Bug Shooting is out of Russia, I've been using it for about 18 months, I think its very intuitive to use - its is designed primarily for s/w developers of which I'm one, so perhaps it works well for that community.
Its big plus to me are its interfaces to bug & issue tracking services like Fogbugz, Mantis, Gemini and others - even Skype.
I've never seen it get a "hearty" recommendation here, or anywhere other that developer centric sites - lukewarm at best I'd say.
I've been using MWSnap. While it hasn't been updated for several years, it is still available, still free, has a easy to understand interface and does exactly what I need it to do.
http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html
yes, mwsnap is a real snap. I use other screen capture programs just for specific jobs, when required.
My vote is for SnagIt. I have been using it for three years now, and have never thought of going elsewhere.
Silki
http://webtoolsandtips.com
SnagIt is *not* a freeware, so it doesn't belong here.
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