Best Free Screen Capture Utility

Screen capture software, as the name indicates, is used to capture parts, or whole of the screen, and save them as images, called as screenshots. These images, or screenshots, may be required for a wide variety of purposes like taking screenshot of your desktop to share with others, or taking screenshots of a particular application/window, or getting screenshots of an error or bug.

Windows does have a utility for this. A PrintScreen key on your keyboard is used for taking screenshots, but it is very basic, and pretty much featureless. Using PrintScreen key, you can take screenshots of the whole screen or of an application in the foreground, which gets copied to clipboard. After that, you have to open the image captured in a graphics editor, to edit it, and/or save it.

Screen capture software offers enhanced features and functionalities, which makes screen capturing very easy, convenient, and efficient.

So, go ahead, and give your best shot with these screenshot applications.

PicPick

Picpick is the pick of the lot. It offers a lot of features, yet, it is simple, and very easy to use.

PicPick offers many options for screen capture. You can select :

Full Screen
Active Window
Window Control - To select parts of window inside a window.
Region - You can specify which region you want to capture.
Fixed Region - You can specify height and width of a region to capture.
Free Hand - Choose any region, any way you want.

These options are available via hotkeys, which can be configured, with many key combinations available. Just press the hotkey, and screen will be captured the way you want. Alternatively, the same options are also available via right click on the tray icon of PicPick.

Auto-scroll can be enabled for windows which have got scrolls. Support for dual monitors is also available.

Images can be saved as BMP, JPG, GIF, or PNG. A wide variety of options are available to use these images the way you want.

You can open the image captured with the PicPick image editor, where you can make changes to the image and enhance it further, as desired. The image editor itself offers a lot of features, similar to MS Paint. You can select areas, choose brushes, fill colors, use eraser, enter text, and enter objects like lines, rectangles, ellipses. You can resize the image, rotate it, and crop it. Effects like gray scale, invert, pixelate can be used. The image can also be blurred, or sharpened. Brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation, can be adjusted via effects too.

Apart from editing the image with the PicPick image editor, the image can be sent to clipboard, or image file. The image can also be sent to Twitter, Facebook, can be uploaded via FTP, or sent by email via outlook. The image can also be sent to Word, PowerPoint, an Excel sheet, or you can also specify any other external program via preferences.

PicPick is a multi-purpose all in one tool, and apart from the screen capture, it also contains Color Picker, Color Palette, Magnifier, Pixel Ruler, Protractor, Cross Hair, and a Whiteboard. A really useful utility. ++good!

Homepage
Download

http://picpick.wiziple.net
http://picpick.wiziple.net/download

System
Language

Windows
English, German

BugShooting

This free screenshot utility was developed by software testers, mainly to capture screenshots of system bugs. But, it is a very able program, and can be used as a general screen capture tool.

BugShooting can capture screen, windows, or specified screen areas. Hotkeys for these individual actions, can be configured, with a lot of key combinations available. The software supports delayed capture, and screenshots can be taken across multiple screens.

BugShooting will save your captured images as BMP, JPG, or PNG. With the built-in image editor you rotate, flip, or crop the screenshots as desired. Selected areas can be highlighted, or inverted and then highlighted, and text and additional images may be added to the screenshot, just as a great variety of geometric shapes like rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows, or free hand lines.

This freeware prints the images, sends them to Skype, your default email client, or any other external program. Simply set up the appropriate application via the “Server” tab under Settings.

If you are a software tester, the captured screenshots can be sent to various bug tracking sites, the list of which is available via the Server setting.

Note : This application requires Microsoft .NET framework 2.0

Homepage
Download

http://www.bugshooting.com/
http://www.bugshooting.com/Home/Download

System
Language

Windows
English, German

Gadwin PrintScreen

This is another free, simple to use utility. While this utility does not offer image editing like PicPick or BugShooting mentioned earlier, but for simple screen capture, it serves the purpose well.

Gadwin PrintScreen can take screenshots of current window, client window, full screen, or a rectangular area. At a given time, only one of the above sources can be specified, and the hotkey will be assigned to that source. The default hotkey is PrintScreen, which can be configured from the several hotkey combos that are available via settings.

Delayed capturing is available.

The images can be saved as BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, or TIFF. The image captured can be resized. Gray scale and image shadow are the only enhancements available.

The images can be copied to clipboard, printer, or to a file and also be sent via email from the program itself.

Note : Be careful to download the free version of the software, since a commercial version is also available.

Homepage
Download

http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/
http://www.gadwin.com/download/

System
Language

Windows
English, German

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best free screen capture utility - screenshots

Last Updated ( Dienstag, 02 Februar 2010 )

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