Screen Grabbing - what do you use?

[gwpriester]

Print Screen

[w00dy]

Snagit ... every working day...

....or Lightscreen, which part of the Portable Apps suite but as a standalone from here:

http://lightscreen.sourceforge.net/

and it's FREE!

[juergen]

It's primary use is to prepare screen shots for documentation so it has some some features other tools do not provide. All the stuff you can do in Xara but as a standalone tool it is worth a look. http://helpandmanual.com/products_tnt_overview.html.
It is free for personal use.

Juergen

[handrawn]

Gadwin PrintScreen [fee version]

all I really need is to tweak the printscreen key to send the capture direct to png file or app of choice - this program does it without fuss, was best of bunch a while back when I looked into it, and never needed so far to change...

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

[willdean]

Vista and Win7 have something called 'snipping tool' which is not too bad - certainly no worse than print-screen + Irfanview

[Eftelibra]

Neat and simple and free - Snippy - 84kb, no install necessary, just click and drag and paste direct into Xara.

http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/

[Big Frank]

This has been a really interesting thread and very valuable for me. Thank you all who have posted your little gems

[amoore]

Because most of our screen captures are for documentation and involve pixel-based editing that Xtreme doesn't do, we use Paint Shop Pro for 96ppi captures. Captures go directly into PSP's workspace, rather than the clipboard, thus saving keystrokes. You can specify the area to capture (area, window, object, etc) so you don't have to waste time cutting it out of the full screen. Supports multiple captures in a run. You can name and save only the ones you want.

For more complex requirements, we use Corel Capture 10, a utility that's bundled with Ventura. Similar settings for capture area. Supports multiple captures. Does name and save each capture (unless you send it to the clipboard), although that can be automated. Allows you to specify both destination and file type. The great thing is, with Corel Capture, you can set a higher ppi and capture to a different scale (say, 120%) or specify the size (max is 7 inches in one dimension).

Before anyone starts going on about how it's impossible to capture at anything other than 96ppi, let me grant that you may be right. Perhaps Corel Capture is doing some very fancy interpolation behind the scenes. However it happens, other applications (Xtreme, Paint Shop Pro, Ventura...) recognize the specs set in Capture, and treat the images accordingly.

I have Snagit. Don't use it. Always seems to take more effort while providing less control. OTOH, I can see how it could be useful to someone with a different workflow.

[davelash]

I'm a long time Snagit user and love it although I have no comparable experience with other products. I did want to note for those of you not familiar with Snagit that it not only has a wide range of screen capture options, but also allows you to add quick effects including shadows, borders, arrows, highlighting, and comment balloons (see example below) -- all right in Snagit. I can now do in seconds what used to require many steps in multiple applications and the effects are non-destructive. Snagit has won my Best Software Productivity Tool of the Year award twice in the past five years:

2004 - PagePlus
2005 - CardScan, Snagit (tie)
2006 - Xara, MindManager (tie)
2007 - Firefox + add-ons
2008 - Snagit 9
2009 - Wordpress and Wired-Marker (running neck and neck)

[amoore]

There are complex requirements and complex requirements.

The arrows and highlights are wonderful if you need them, but we don't. More than anything else, we need control over the resolution and size.