Free Screen Capture Application That Works Great
For a long time about your only option for easily taking screen-shots was to buy Snag-It. Although I’ve seen some folks who are very good at using the Windows built in PrtSc and Paint I find that too cumbersome for the average computer user. I’ve been a Snag-It fan for years but at $40 per license and 4 computers in the house it’s hard to justify it. I think most people would only have an occasional need for such a program so once again, why spend $40 if there are other options?
Today, I was working on our new laptop and needed to take a screen-shot so I went looking for a free alternative on Download.com. After reading a bunch of reviews I decided to try ScreenHunter 5 Free. It’s a small application at 3.5MB so it was a quick download and install. The only part of the installation I changed was to NOT install the browser toolbar. If I installed the toolbar for every program that asked to install one I’d probably have about a dozen toolbars taking up space and resources so I normally skip that part.
One thing I noticed about ScreenHunter 5 is that on Download.com it didn’t say anything about it being compatible with Vista. I’m using Vista Home Premium and didn’t have any problems with the install or using the application.
Like Snag-It, ScreenHunter 5 gives you some options. By pressing the From button you can choose what key should be pressed to trigger a screen-shot being taken (the default is F6). You can also choose what to capture, the active window, full screen or a rectangular area. My favorite is the rectangular area because I can capture anything I want, anywhere on the screen. (The screen-shots below were taken using ScreenHunter 5)
By pressing the To button you can choose to save the captured image to the clipboard, which is great for just pasting the screen-shot into an email or a Word doc. Or you can automatically save them as a file.
Overall ScreenHuner 5 is super simple to use and I highly recommend it.
Regards,
-Bert
