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Oh PrintScreen how well you have served us over the years; always there, willing and able, when the need arrived to capture that very special moment in our computing lives. So simple, yet so empowering: press PrintScreen, paste into Paint and go. Life was grand with your help. However your days are numbered.
Lets take a quick count: How many people have taken, or have had the need to take, a screenshot (of a program, window, chat, text, etc.) in the past? How many anticipate taking, or needing to take, a screenshot in the future? How many people have used a method besides pressing PrintScreen and pasting it into an image editor like Paint? I am sure there will be more Vista users that answer in the affirmative to the previous question then other users because of a built-in feature for Vista that Microsoft was generous enough to include: Snipping Tool. Snipping Tool is/was a step above the orthodox PrintScreen method. With Snipping Tool, in addition to the traditional capture-the-whole-screen, one is able to capture individual windows or define specific areas of the screen to capture. After the desired region is captured, it is placed into the Snipping Tool editor where one could use a pen tool to manually write on it or use a highlighter tool to highlight something specific. After the desired edits are made, one can save the snip into JPG, GIF or PNG format. However, being able to do all that with Snipping Tool is good and all, but why stop there? And what about the people who don’t have Vista? Must they suffer and stick to the PrintScreen method? Nahhhhhhhhhh. Ladies and gents, FastStone Capture is here to save the day (actually it has been saving the day for a while now):
FastStone Capture, in my opinion, is the best free screen capture/screenshot tool out there. In fact FS C is the screen capture/screenshot tool that I use to take screenshots of programs for use on this blog. Yes it is the program I use to make those awesome arrows, write text, and outline areas with boxes.
FS C is feature filled, has a very small footprint computer resource wise, and is extremely easy to use. With FS C you can take a screenshot of the current active window, capture a window (does not have to be the active window – you get to chose), capture a specific region (via rectangle or free form tool), capture the full screen and capture a scrolling window (like in a web browser if you have to scroll up/down or left/right on a webpage, FS C will capture the whole webpage). You can do all that by either clicking on the respective buttons on the “capture panel” that you see above, use hotkeys to active a feature, or right click on the FS C system tray icon and chose what you want to do.
Once you make a screen capture the image is sent to the FS C “image editor”:
From this editor you can highlight and select specific parts of the screenshot and save just them instead of the whole image:
You can crop the image:
You can add captions to the image:
You can add a watermark to the image:
You can resize the image:
If you hit 
you will be able to do all the fun things that I do for my screenshots:
When all is set and done and you are happy with everything, you can save your image by clicking the 
button:
You have the choice of choosing multiple different formats and you since FS C applies a naming scheme to all your screenshots, you don’t have to enter a custom name for the screenshot if you don’t want to; however you can if you want.
Now of course if you are the busy type you may just want to take screenshots and skip the whole “send-to-editor- process. No problem…FS C can do it all:
Now there are still more features to FS C (such as automatically add a watermark, hotkeys support, etc.); so I have not done full justice to this program but I think you get my point: FastStone Capture is awesome. I truly recognized how much I rely on FS C when I had to take screenshots for this post. I obviously could not use FS C to take screenshots of itself, so I used Snipping Tool. I felt like crying.
Before I give you the download link to FastStone Capture there is an important thing to note: FastStone Capture used to 
be a free-for-home-use program; it is now a shareware program ($19.95 for lifetime license). However you can still download and use the last free version (v5.3) without having to purchase a license. I wrote this review discussing the features of v5.3; newer shareware versions have more features – such as video capturing capabilities – that I did not discuss in this review. I like FS C so much, and I use it so much, that I would buy the latest version if it was within my price range ($20 is too much for me…).
Update: I went ahead and purchased the latest version of FastStone Capture. It is one of the best $19.95 I have ever spent.
Anyway, I am sure you just want me to stop talking and give you the download link now:
Version reviewed: v5.3
Supported OS: Windows 98 and higher
Download size: 1.3 MB
Price: $0 for v5.3 and $19.95 for the latest version with a lifetime license
Freeware-limitations: The latest v5.3 is free for home and non-commercial use only
[FastStone Capture v5.3 download - installer]
[FastStone Capture v5.3 download - portable]
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Greenshot is a nice, open source screenshot program w/ a number of great features.
Hi David and Dex,
I have a 2nd dream (whilst the 1st dream for highlighting web pages prior to saving as .MHT is still slumbering).
It would involve the use of another capture program, like one of your suggestions.
My question is -
Can either of those be configured to NOT use the keyboard’s Print key ?
(I want to continue allowing picPick to use that key)
David and Dex,
I have tried both.
Horizon33 does not require the Print Key, but it does need some improvements. I have written to it’s author with suggestions.
Greenshot is better than Horizon33. It only allows the Print Key, but can be used without it.
I like that it can autosave (aka directly save) in my pre-chosen format, to my pre-chosen folder. With the choice to either let it choose the name, or pop up a dialog asking for the name.
Those were some of the suggestions I sent to Horizon33 author.
If neither of you have tried picPick yet, trust me, you should give it a try. I will still be using that for my main captures.
I will use Greenshot for my 2nd dream (to place a companion jpg, next to my saved .MHT file.)
An update.
As I mentioned, the only thing missing from picPick, is the ability to Autosave all the open Tabs from the editor.
To ‘fix’ that problem, I have MWSnap running as well.
It is free, and is not too shabby.
It’s hotkeys are very flexible, and I have settled for this -
Ctrl Shift Q to grab the full screen, and autosave it.
Ctrl Shift W to grab a Window, and autosave it.
After pressing Ctrl Shift W, you just hover the mouse, and a border appears around the Window it will capture. Usually you would hover over the Titlebar of the app, and then click it.
You can set it so that it’s form does not appear (just get a wee chirp sound).
You can pre-choose the naming convention for your Autosaves. I don’t bother with a prefix, and just let it assign the Date & Time to the saves.
You may have to turn off some picPick Hotkeys.
Rob (Robert)
AGAIN! I can’t find any mention of overlay-parts of the screen.
Have tried a zillion of printscreen pgm’s.
They all end up with a black field where an overlay is.
If I use the term correctly (?) Overlay = e.g. where my TV-card plays the TV program. Also e.g. where GomPlayer plays a movie-file.
This pgm???????????
@Casey: Most screen capture programs in Windows do not grab video from the hardware overlay. You should be able to disable the hardware overlay in your player (or graphics card) settings, thereby allowing your screen capture to include video.
I haven’t tried this software, but they claim to be able to capture the overlay areas:
http://www.captrue.com/captrue.html
@ Ashraf: although I’m happy with Greenshot for most of my screen capture needs, you should check out another open source capturing program, ZScreen.
http://code.google.com/p/zscreen/
just used Fastone Capture to convert a scribd ipaper document to pdf using the capture scrolling window feature. Wow, very impresive!
As a matter of fact. you can use FSC to take screenshots of itself! Just use the portable version and the installed version together.
This is truly a gem, considering all of its features in a small portable package. Thanks for sharing!!
Have been using Faststone Capture for 3 years now, love it, much prefer it to snagit, very fast, and good editor and other options, bought a license because it is worth it. I use it every day.
I have been using FastStoneCapture for some years and I agree 100% with Ashraf…
I just wanted to say that FastStone have four really excellent programs, all are free.
They are uncomplicated and get straight to the point.
Well worth the time to check out their webpage…..
….and Happy New Year to everyone!!
I lost the ability to print directly from FastStone–I have to save and then print from that….I think this problem started with my upgrade from XP to Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I wrote to them several times, but never got a reply……Any ideas…?
Ashraf turned me on to FastStone Capture, but I guess I missed this article even though I have been reading dotTech for quite a while now (I’m thinking a couple of years on and off). I did try the newer version that I would have to pay and really love it. I will buy it when I get the chance, and I’ll be buying the Family License since the price for that is reasonable for the amount of computers we have.
I am very happy to use FastStone Image Viewer to do the things I need to do in the articles I write here. I actually just got here from another post so I’ve got the portable one so I could enjoy using this via my flash drive. Thanks Ashraf!
What interests me: does the last free version run in W7 64bits?
@corno: Yes