Screen capture: Free screenshot utilities – and more
- Mar . 17 . 2009 | Category: Personal Blog |
- 14 Comments
Have you seen http://www.giveawayoftheday.com? I find it handy for 2 reasons.
1. Obviously for the giveaway products themselves – which are commercial software products that are given away for free for 24 hours. Usually you have to install them within the 24 hours to get them working for free. And occasionally there has been a product I have downloaded.
2. But what I find more useful often is the discussion afterwards. Users can download (or not) and leave a comment. For most products that are given away, you will usually find that some of the commenters will link through to a free product that they say does the same job better.
I like that.
Take today’s example. It “allows users to grab images right off their screen, edit them using paint and photo editing tools” but in the following discussion various posters linked through to over half a dozen alternatives, all free.
My favorite, being a Firefox user, was the link through to Fire Shot which is a Firefox browser addon.
Other finds that caught my eye:
FastStone Capture “is a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages.” You can add watermarks with this one, too.
Rumshot – “Get classy – use Rumshot to automatically generate a themed and stylish screenshot preview!”
Talk to you later. Hope you found this useful…
Gary
David from SEM Labs 18th March 2009 1:36 pm
As a Linux user, I just use the one that comes bundled with Ubuntu – not as good as FastStone, but it does the job. There is also a good FF plugin called Screengrab, which you can use to get screenies. Has some nice features.
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Beginner Bow 18th March 2009 10:48 pm
Thanks a lot for this post
vick from adjustable beds 26th March 2009 9:41 am
If you just want a pic of what you’re currently looking at on your screen (browser or not in browser) just hitting print screen and pasting that in an editing program will do the trick. Or press alt+print screen to just capture the current window. If it’s a web page though, then there’s a few addons for both IE7+ and firefox that will capture the entire length of the web page and save it as an image file for you. I believe the one for IE7 and 8 is called “IE snap”, and the one I’m using for firefox is Pearl “Crescent Page Saver”.
Leon Huang from Singapore Photographer 24th May 2009 3:31 am
Interesting site. But they are all Windows software.
Jackie 30th May 2009 2:59 pm
Thanks for sharing, luckily my pc is windows-based.
Brian from Airsoft Sniper Rifle 30th May 2009 3:14 pm
Thanks for the tip on FastStone Capture. I use Camtasia Studio myself, but I know a lot of people that want to do screencap videos and don’t want to spring for a product like that.
This should be a good alternative for them.
Freebies 3rd June 2009 9:53 pm
You don’t need to download software to take screenshots. Just press Ctrl+PrtScrn to copy a screenshot to your clipboard. Then use Ctrl+V to paste that screenshot into paint, photoshop, or your graphics program of choice.
Shaz from Photoshop Tutorials 4th June 2009 12:08 am
thanks for sharing the link… its really a very good and convenient site, specially when a software they offer catches your eyes and then learns something is much better than that…
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Dharma from Bali Wedding 5th June 2009 3:40 pm
thank you for sharing…love it..
Amy from Free Xbox 360 13th June 2009 4:56 am
Oh my goodness. I never even realised there was an alternative to PrintScreen! You learn something new every day! Well, I did today. Thanks, I’ll try those.
Webdesigner 15th June 2009 9:07 pm
As I alway mentioned: good software doesn’t need to be expansive. Personally I use Fire Shot and it’s a great tool for Firefox!
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Alex 24th June 2009 5:56 am
Thanks for sharing, bookamrked!
Marc Achtelig 27th January 2010 9:49 pm
Maybe some good additions to this list are the checklist of criteria for selecting a screen capture tool at http://www.indoition.com/screen-capture-tool-choosing.htm, as well as the list of screen capture tools at http://www.indoition.com/screen-capture-tools-survey.htm.
Paul from Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter 20th February 2010 5:38 am
I generally still use Camtasia, but I’ve also found some relatively inexpensive or free ones that work in a pinch.
If you only need capture times of less than 5 minutes, try The Jing Project at http://www.jingproject.com.
I’ve also used one called ScreenShow in a pinch too.
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