25 Tools to Capture Screenshots for Free.

Screen capture tool is the most important tool for webmasters and bloggers. Even in day to day activities we tend to use tools with trial versions to capture screenshots. Undoubtedly TechSmaith’s SnagIT is the best but you need to shell out heavy money to purchase the license. There are many free screen capture tools available on internet. Some of them are comparable to SnagIT. Below is the list of 25 Free Screen Capture tools that are available.

1) Screenshotcaptor –
This is one of the most advanced screen-capture utility available for free. You need to sign-up and donate in order to use lifetime for free. If you want a free license then visit this page. The license last for only 60 days. Once the license is expired you can generate the license key again by visiting this page. For detailed tutorials about Screenshotcaptor visit here.

2) Bug Shooting
Bug Shooting is a simple and powerful screenshot tool. A number of functions are available with this tool like – Capture screen, Capture windows, Capture screen area, Delayed capture, Support for multiple screen. You can even edit the screenshot with the options of cropping, resizing, adding arrows, text and images etc. One can even combine the multiple screenshots into one. The utility also provides you with an option of Screen magnifier available in circular and rectangular shapes. Lots of custom shortcuts can be incorporated to save time.3) Windows Live writer
Using Windows Live writer you can take the unlimited screenshots for free. You just need to download the plug-in developed by Joe Cheng. Download ScreenCapture dll (22kb) and copy it to the following location – C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins directory Open Windows Live Writer and you will see an “Insert Screen Capture” link in the sidebar. Click on it and make your selection as per your requirement. This plug-in has limited features but it will indeed be helpful for those who are in hunt of free screen capture utility Source

4) Cropper – Point and shoot screen captures
Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. You can easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Some parts of a web site, including text and images can easily be captured using this tool. Many plug-ins are available with this tool like- Sending captures to Amazon S3 or flickr account, Capturing to an AVI movie or animated GIF image. More information about Copper Plug-ins are available here. Download cropper here.

5) Using Wink
Wink is primarily a Tutorial and Presentation creation software on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. It Capture screenshots from your PC, or use images in BMP/JPG/PNG/TIFF/GIF formats. The tool is embedded with smart captue feature that capture screenshots automatically as you use your PC, based on mouse and keyboard input (great time saver and generates professional captures). Download Wink here.

6) ScreenHunter
ScreenHunter 5.0 Free is completely free screen capture software for you to easily take screenshots. The other versions like Pro and Plus also comes but you need to shell out some money to purchase those version. Instead you can use the basic version which is free. Using the free version you can accomplish most of your task easily. You can easily take the screenshot of active window, rectangular area ,full screen, delayed capture and many other options. Visit here to see the comparison between all three versions of the utility. Join their mailing list to get the free copy

7) FastStone Capture

It is a powerful screen capture tool that allows you to capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. You can choose to send captures to editor, file, clipboard, printer, email, Word/PowerPoint document or upload them to your website. Editing tools include annotating (texts, arrowed lines, highlights), resizing, cropping, sharpening, watermarking, applying edge effects and many more. Other features include global hotkeys, automatic filename generation, support for external editors, a color picker, a screen magnifier and a screen ruler. FastStone Capture saves files in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF formats. Some of the versions Later than 5.3 are paid. And best of all, FastStone 5.3 is absolutely free. Download Faststone here.

8) SnapNDrag (Mac OS X)
lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging the resulting screenshot off. For example, to email a screenshot, you need to drag the screenshot from SnapNDrag to the Mail application. It is that simple. Supports PNG and TIFF for times when image quality cannot be compromised. Or use JPEG with adjustable quality for smaller file sizes. Download SnapNDrag here.

9) Capture Me (Mac OS X)
is a flexible screen capture and recording utility for Mac OS X which features a floating capture window, several saving options, and resize ability. It has ability to down scale captures (proportionally or not) and can save the captures as PNG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, TIFF, or GIFF format. You can easily adjust the translucency of capture window. For more information visit here. Download Capture Me here.

10) Hot Screen
Hot Screen may be the smallest free screen capture (only 57K). It supports BMP and GIF format in true-color, index color, grayscale and black & white. Download Hotscreen here.

11) Screengrab
It is an extension for Firefox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window – from a small selection, to a complete page. the entire scrollable document, just the visible bit, or a draggable selection. Screengrab will even save just the contents of an individual frame. You can save the screenshots as jpeg or png. For more details about the features available with this firefox extension visit here. Firefox addon is available here.

12) Using JPG Capture
A screen capture utility which is developed by Ken Huang for developers as well as generic users. JPG Capture is a utility designed for developers to capture debugging screenshots, while it is also ideal for general screen capture purposes. JPG Capture can capture the desktop screen into picture files in sequence. Users can define the capture hotkey, capture area (current window, full screen, or rectangular area), picture format (JPG, GIF, BMP etc.), and also the destination. Download JPG capture here.

13) Gadwin PrintScreen
With a single keystroke you can capture the screenshot. The captured screen can then be sent to the printer, or saved to disk as a file in 6 different graphics file formats. Using this tool you can capture the entire Windows screen, the active window, or a specified area, when the hot key is pressed. The hot key defaults to the PrintScreen key, but users may also define other keys to initiate a capture. The tool automatically names the output files in sequential order for multiple screen shots. Download gadwin PrintScreen here.

14) HoverSnap
HoverSnap take snapshots of the full screen, active window or a selected area. It can even capture layered windows. You can even FTP upload your screenshots. Supported fileformats are – jpg, png, bmp. It Auto-generate filename option will add the time stamp (date/time) to your filename in order to be able to take several captures without having to change the filename. Download HoverSnap here.

15) Capture-A-ScreenShot
With Capture-A-ScreenShot, you can easily capture the last active screen, full screen, or selected area. Download Capture-A-Screenshot here.

16) MWSnap
Using MWSnap you can easily capture the whole desktop, a highlighted window, an active menu, a control, or a fixed or free rectangular part of the screen. It also contains several graphical tools: a zoom, a ruler, a color picker and a window spy. The best part is that MWSnap does not require installation and does not need any special dlls, drivers or system files which can mess up your system. Download MWSnap here.

17) Jing –A project by TechSmith
The bottom line for this project is – Capture. Annotate. Share . You can easily capture the images and record the screen for free and upload them to flickr for sharing with your friends. Videos are saved as swf format and images as png. Jing Set-up is available here.

18) MS Office Snipping Tool
Microsoft is not shipping built-in snipping tool (The screen capture utility) in Vista with all versions of the OS. Vista Basic, do not have snipping tool. Vista Basic is just a replica of Windows XP with a changed look. You need to upgrade your version to get the snipping tool and other important utilities that your basic edition is missing for sure. If you want to know how activate the snipping tool then visit here. Learn more about the embedded utility in MS Office here.

19) AndySnap
To take the screenshot just press the Print Screen button on your keyboard (also labelled as PrtScr on some keyboards). AndySnap will then start the capture process with what you see on the screen. You can also take a snap shot by pressing the “Snap Now!” button on the AndySnap configuration screen. If you are taking a screen capture of mouse activated items like drop-down menus, you will need to use the Print Screen button on your keyboard to successfully capture all the items on the screen. The tool supports jpeg, png, bmp, gif, tif type of images. For detailed features available visit the help section. Download AndySnap here.

20) InstantShot!
It is a free screen capture utility for OS X. InstantShot! offers classical screenshot functionality for capturing the whole screen, a portion of it or a window and also the option to make timed screenshots or to make delayed captures over time. It offers a wide range of preferences and options to fit everyone’s needs. Supported file types are JPEG, PNG and TIFF. For detailed functionality about the tool visit here . Download InstantShot

21) AnalogX Capture (Win)
Capture is a quick-and-easy screen capture utility for Windows (and NT), which allows you to capture the entire screen, at any color depth and resolution, and save it into a Bitmap file for editing.

22) ScreenPrint32
You can print and/or capture to disk or clipboard, the full desktop, active window, predefined area, or user selected area of the screen. Add user defined headers and footers with date and time stamps etc, resize the printed image, convert to grey scale or negative image, fade or resize the image to reduce toner/ink usage, print by default to any available printer. Images may be saved to GIF, BMP, JPG or PNG formats. Download ScreenPrint32 here.

23) SWBCapture
is a screen capture utility that allows you to quickly and easily capture an image of any window on your desktop, or the entire desktop. SWBCapture allows you to save captured images to Bitmap, JPEG, or GIF format. You can alter the compression/quality for JPEG formatted images. Download SWB capture here.

24) Snippy
How often have you carefully selected some text from a Web page and copied it to an email message? Snippy makes this a snap! Simply click on the little Snippy icon in the taskbar notification area, and mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — that’s it, you’re done! The cut-out image will now be in your clipboard, and you can paste it in another application. If you are cutting out a portion of an Internet Explorer window, the URL will also be copied to the clipboard; this makes it very convenient to select something interesting on a Web site and send it out in an email message. Download snippy here.

25) Screen Capture Professional 1.4.1
You can easily capture your printed screens without any help of image processing software. When You press Print Screen on the keyboard, Windows takes a snapshot of your screen-content. Screen Capture Professional will automatically capture and save this snapshot to a folder called Captured Screens, inside the program installation folder or you can select any other folder on your local machine. Additionally, you can convert the images from BMP to JPG. Download Screen Capture professional 1.4.1 here.

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Tagged as: Screen Capture, Screen Record, Screenshot