Hardcopy is a professional and easy-to-use application that allows you to capture screenshots under Windows. You can capture rectangular parts of the screen as well as complete windows. Captured images can be cut easily and colour shade can be modified. Pictures can be saved, copied in Clipboard, edited with any imaging program or printed.

Download HardCopy 17.0.08 in Softonic

HandySnap is a precision-engineered screen capture software designed to capture any portion of the computer screen and insert comments and various graphics to captured images. HandySnap features a tiny, concise user interface that doesn’t obscure the desktop. By implementing a Photoshop-style design in the interface, the program minimizes the learning curve for users.

Download HandySnap 1.4.2.0 in Softonic

How often do you need to share a screenshot online? Whether it's just for fun or serious professional matters, Jet Screenshot makes it a breeze.

As a screen capturing tool, I must say Jet Screenshot is a bit limited: it only features two capturing modes (full screen and user-selected region) and some basic editing capabilities such as adding text, cropping the image and marking certain areas in your screenshot with a pen.

The main feature in Jet Screenshot though is the possibility to publish any of those captured images straight to an FTP server. You can use your own server or make use of the one provided by Jet Screenshot, which, obviously, has a few limitations regarding size and storage.

In any case, this is probably the fastest and easiest way to get your captured images online. The only thing Jet Screenshot needs to improve is the method used to show you the web link of your newly-uploaded image: the current balloon tip is certainly not very user-friendly.

With Jet Screenshot you can capture and share images online in just a couple of clicks.

Download Jet Screenshot 1.0 in Softonic

If you ever need to take a screenshot of a whole website, you'll face a common problem: how do you capture the complete webpage, from top to bottom?

The answer is SiteShoter, a really simple tool that's been specifically designed to capture websites. It's a standalone app – not a web browser plug-in – that can take screenshots from a given webpage just by entering its URL in SiteShoter's interface.

The program captures the viewable area in any resolution you set, but its most interesting feature by far is the ability to capture the whole website, from top to bottom, scrolling down the page on its own a producing an image in JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF or PNG.

SiteShoter also includes some basic configuration tools with which you can set the image quality and size and also opt to disable certain web elements such as Javascript or Flash.

Capturing complete websites is no longer a pain thanks to SiteShoter, a simple tool that can grab the whole webpage from top to bottom.

Download SiteShoter 1.18 in Softonic

Lightscreen is a free, simple and practical utility to capture images for those that don't want to mess about with post processing or resizing tools.

Lightscreen offers three ways to capture screenshots - full screen, active window, and an area that you can select yourself. All three offer you enough scope to capture just about any type of screenshot. You can configure the format, prefix and suffix of the file (numeric or date format) and specify the folder to save it to. You can also configure a hotkey to make screenshots instantaneous. There are also some other additional little additions such as control over image quality or you can also configure a delay on the screen capture if you're using the hotkey. Once configured Lightscreen becomes especially useful to make multiple catches because every time you press capture, it automatically saves a file with the filename, format and parameters that you specified. The slight downside is that you can only configure a limited number of formats to save screenshots in namely PNG, JPG; BMP, PPM, XBM and TIFF.

A free and easy screen capture tool that will appeal to fans of The GIMP or those that just need a simple screenshot solution.

Download Lightscreen 0.3 in Softonic

This Firefox plugin allows the user to save a whole website, a frame or a selected area from any of this as an image. You can access this function either from the File menu or right clicking on the webpage you want to save. The plugin offers several configuration options to select area, output format and quality of image.

Download Save As Image 2.026 in Softonic

Taking video shots of your desktop is essential for those that are building tutorials or trying to help others in using a program.

The problem is that sometimes, the recording software can be often be complicated or difficult to use but Screen Video Recorder attempts to be one of those rare breeds that keeps everything to an absolute basic minimum. Although it only saves video captures in AVI or WMV format (which are not exactly the smallest formats to share via e-mail or upload etc) it compensates by making taking screen captures very easy indeed.

The interface consists of little more than small window that allows you to stop and start recordings with a few options to configure the audio codec you want to use, video codec, start a timer and a hotkey that you'd like to use to start and stop recordings. The region that's captured depends on which of the 5 options you've asked it to record - random region, window, full screen, fixed size and fixed region.

However, it not only covers screen activity but it can also record images from webcams attached to IM clients such as AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo Messenger. It can also capture video from TV Cards, DVD's and just about any other video input device except video cameras.

A very simple screen video capture tool just about anyone can use for capturing screen activity, webcam chats and video in general.

Download Screen Video Recorder 1.5.33.0 in Softonic

Massive photo editing tools like Photoshop are great, but some find them too heavy and complicated for everyday usage.

PicPick is definitely a better choice if what you need is just a simple image editor. With PicPick you can easily perform simple editing tasks to your photos, including brightness, contrast and color adjustment, grayscale, blur, pixelate and other special effects. There's also a cool whiteboard feature which enables you to write and draw directly on the screen.

But PicPick is not only an image editor: it's also a full featured screen capturing tool with which you can capture the image on your monitor in several ways: full screen, active window, user-defined area and more. Plus, PicPick can work with several documents simultaneously and captures can be triggered with customizable keyboard shortcuts, which makes it even handier.

I liked the versatility of PicPick, as well as the fact that it doesn't require installation. On the downside, I missed certain features such as support for printing or the ability to capture complete webpages with automatic scrolling.

PicPick is a lightweight yet full featured image editor and capturer, perfect for simple daily image editing tasks.

Download PicPick 1.7.2 in Softonic

Do you ever want to take a screen shot of a web page in your desktop or web application? Html Snapshot can capture the whole web page as JPG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and GIF image on the fly.

With Html Snapshot, you can build thumbshot server for millions of web pages easily. You have full control of the database yourself. And Html Snapshot is especially suitable to be used on server side. It works well on Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server and can be used with popular server side script languages like ASP, ASP.Net, PHP and Perl etc.

Download HTML Snapshot 2.1.2008.701 in Softonic

WinSnap Portable is a handy screen capturing tool that you can take anywhere with you, because it's been especially designed to work from a removable device.

This tool is based on the original WinSnap; in fact, it's basically the same program, except for the fact that this WinSnap doesn't use Windows registry and can be run without installing anything on the computer, which makes it suitable to use with a USB key.

The program can capture the screen in different ways and also applies some simple effects such as a sepia or black and white layer, a dropping shadow or a watermark to identify your images – though this watermark can only be another image and not text. Also, effects cannot be customized in any way - you either apply them or not.

WinSnap Portable saves captured images in the most popular formats, and also allows you to send them by email and copy them to the clipboard straight away.

If you ever need to make screenshots on the go, WinSnap Portable is an excellent choice for its simplicity of use and variety of tools and effects.

Download WinSnap Portable Edition 2.1.4 in Softonic

WinSnap is a small enhancement utility for taking and editing screenshots. It can easily capture windows of non-rectangular form with the background of your choice, automatically perform simple canvas transformations and coloring effects, add professional smoothing shadows in Photoshop style and more. Also, WinSnap supports variety of image formats and provides advanced auto-save features.

WinSnap is not the only screen capture tool on the Internet, and you may find many others. However, WinSnap is designed to be different with a range of options including:

• Easy screenshots of windows with rounded corners
• Saving of ‘window form’ info and the addition of real smoothing shadows
• Support for alpha-channel and PNG/TIFF transparency
• A unique "Application" capture mode that allows the one-click capture of all visible windows in the foreground application
• A special "Multi-Object" capture mode that can select multiple windows on the screen and easily combine them into one screenshot
• Basic coloring effects and canvas transformation
• Advanced auto-save and auto-copy options
• A configurable "External Tools" menu for opening image editors and optimizers
• All the usual keyboard and mouse control (replacing PrintScreen)

Download Winsnap 2.1.4 in Softonic

There are a few utilities out there which can make your life so much easier, you wouldn't contemplate living without them. As someone who works on the web, I'm taking screenshots all the time and SnagIt is the only tool I'd use for this vital element of my job.

In its latest incarnation, SnagIt has added a lot of new features and a jazzed-up interface. While the old familiar 'big red button' remains, much of the UI (particularly in the Editor window) has been completely overhauled. Gone is the XP blue of previous versions, replaced with a Vista-friendly charcoal look which works pretty well.

The program's key features (taking and editing screenshots) remain pretty much unchanged. You still have a huge amount of power of just what type of screenshot you can take, with timers, cursor settings and profiles all still playing a major role. I was pleased to see that my profiles from the last version of SnagIt were kept as it would have been a real nuisance to have to re-program them.

The biggest improvements to this new version are certainly connected to the Editor window. For example: whereas previously, you had to take a capture, work on it, save it and then take your next one; now you can take as many screenshots as you like, using whichever profiles, and work on them all as you wish. This is a huge time-saver and a very welcome addition to the program.

Another feature that has been added is of less obvious use. SnagIt now supports meta-tagging and labeling of captured images. The idea behind this feature is that you start to use SnagIt to categorize your images as well as capture them. I can understand the thinking behind this addition but I'm not sure if it's really much more than feature-creep. I can't see myself changing my workflow to fit with SnagIt, nor do I want to lose the capability of moving image files around at will (if you use Windows Explorer to move tagged images, the tags and labels are lost).

SnagIt 9 represents a big step forward for a great utility. While some of the new functionality may not appeal, the most significant changes are major improvements to what was already a very good piece of software. Strongly recommended.

Download SnagIt 9.0.0.351 in Softonic

Screen captures are useful for a variety of tasks from building tutorials to helping out those with technical issues.

The program is a great way to create help documents, online tutorials, manuals, training handouts, presentations, marketing materials, web pages, emails and more. You can capture
text and edit it from just about any part of your screen plus capture, edit and annotate screenshots and pictures. One of the most important aspects of this program is that it can capture frames and images from DirectX graphics and applications. Normally DirectX can cause problems when trying to capture shots and images but HyperSnap allows you to do so quickly and efficiently. In addition to everything else, it also includes a button capture tool which is perfect for professional technical writers who want to capture multiple documents at once rather than having to create a new capture file for each object. The program is easy to access from the context menu and it integrates with Windows clipboard to facilitate repetitive tasks.

Very easy to access and use, HyperSnap is an essential tool for anyone that regularly needs to take snaps of DirectX applications and videos.

Download HyperSnap-DX 6.31.01 in Softonic

Gadwin PrintScreen captures the contents of the screen with a single keystroke. The captured screen can then be sent to the printer, or saved to disk as a file in 6 different graphics file formats. Gadwin PrintScreen 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. Gadwin PrintScreen allows you to e-mail the captured images to recipients of your choice.

Download Gadwin PrintScreen 4.3 in Softonic

Why install a third-party screen capturing application when you can use the Print Screen key? This is probably what the CapTrue developer thought and that's why he created this small app.

With CapTrue you're not installing a capture tool, but rather improving the screenshot utility that comes bundled with Windows. So, instead of just having two capturing modes (the whole screen or just the active window) you can now choose between three: whole screen, active window and user-defined area. Each mode can be conveniently triggered with a customizable hotkey.

But this new capture mode is not the most outstanding feature in CapTrue. The program also helps you capture video images (which other similar tools fail to do) and lets you choose between different formats to save your screenshots. Also, you can either copy the capture straight to the clipboard or have the program save it for you automatically, with consecutive file names. Being such a complete capturing app, it’s a shame it doesn't include some editing tools, at least the most basic ones.

CapTrue adds new capabilities to the Windows standard screenshot functionality, making it more useful and complete, though still lacking in basic editing tools.

Download CapTrue 1.0 in Softonic

The PrtScr key is quite useful – it lets you capture the screen without any third-party app. But this simplicity also makes it quite limited.

If you want to get rid of those limitations, use, the PrtScr app instead. In spite of sharing the same name, this capturing tool has nothing to do with Windows standard capturing function. It offers extended functionality, such as the ability to capture user-defined areas or send the captured image by email straightaway, and also features a fairly complete settings menu where you can customize the keyboard shortcut to launch the program and the format in which to save captured images, among others.

When running, PrtScrt displays an icon in the system tray from where you can access the program's tools. I loved the way images are displayed on the desktop right after capturing them – floating in a kind of smooth 3D animation.

On the downside, it took me a while to distinguish between its three main functions - and to find the help file as well, hidden in the "About" window. I also missed some editing tools, at least the most basic ones.

PrtScr lets you capture images in a stylish way and share them by email right away, but lacks documentation and also editing tools.

Download PrtScr 1.0 in Softonic

WebShot is a program that allows you to take full screen screenshots and thumbnail-sized captures of web pages or whole websites. It comes with a command line interface for advanced users and supports the most popular formats: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP.

You can take snapshots of the complete website from top to bottom, automatically scrolling all the way down the browser's window. Also, there's the possibilty of setting the size of the capture window and capture a thumbnail.

WebShot has support for batch processing images, which means that you can capture several websites in a row by loading a list with their URLs from a TXT file.

Download WebShot 1.58 in Softonic

BB FlashBack has the advantage over similar screen recorders in that it can record video activity in different formats and allows you to add all sorts of text, images and sound.

The program is very customisable in that it can be customised to take snapshots of only certain parts of a screen at all times - so you can make it dedicated to just the left or right hand side of the screen. Another key benefit is that it's very easy to create shortcuts for screen recordings with the keyboard. In this way, you hardly need to use the mouse. It's the screen recorder with all the features you need to make high quality movies and deliver them in the right format for you and your audience. Probably the best feature though is that you can easily add text, images and sound. You can record a commentary while recording the screen or add it later. The commentary can be in MP3 or WAV format and you can add text boxes, tips bubbles and images to your movie. When exporting, BB FlashBack screen recorder exports to Flash, AVI, WMV, EXE and PowerPoint so it's pretty flexible in that respect too.

An excellent video screen cast solution that's simple enough for beginners but has enough advanced features to keep experts happy.

Download BB Flashback 1.5.6.324 in Softonic

Since the AVI format is one of the easiest to edit, it's popular for people creating presentations, video tutorials and other instructional films.

It's not very often though that you get a screen capture tool which actually captures video in this format. AviTools consists of two programs - AviRecorder to capture screen activity in AVI videos and AviBuilder to generate still images from such files. You can record absolutely everything that happens on your desktop and reduce the file size somewhat by reducing the sampling frequency (although you lose a bit of video quality too). There are three different recording modes in fact - Whole Desktop which will record anything on your entire desktop; Window which lets you choose a window on your desktop or Rectangle which allows you to draw a rectangle on your desktop that will define the recording region. Simply move the mouse cursor to one corner of the desired rectangle, press the left mouse button and drag the mouse to the opposite corner of the rectangle. Release the mouse button there. AviBuilder works in a similarly simple to use way - simply select the images you want to use on the timeline, the resolution you want to save them at and the sampling rate.

If you're making a video tutorial or need your screenshots in AVI format, this is the quickest way to do it.

Download AviTools 1.2 in Softonic

I'm always looking for new ways to speed up taking screenshots and the less mouse clicks the better in my opinion.

That's why Desktop Screenshot Whiz rates highly for me because it reduces screenshot taking to a simple press of the Print Screen key. Simply by hitting this key, the screen that you've currently got open is captured and opened in Desktop Screenshot Whiz which then offers you a range of editing options. This basically means you can select a certain region of the screen or take the whole screen. The program supports all of the major image formats and importantly, also allows you to apply text and some basic shaping effects such as adding triangles, squares and rectangles. You can improve the image quality with a few post processing effects such as filters. The program sits discreetly in the system tray in between captures which you can save to file, print immediately or save to the clipboard. The program wins lots of points for its ease of use, configuration and save options but the editing options are too limited to make it a great screenshot tool. Even basic tools such as a spray paint option or erasing tool are not available but if it's speed you're looking for, it's just the ticket.

A quick and easy screenshot tool that just needs more editing options to make it more useful and competitive compared to it's rivals.

Download Desktop Screenshot Whiz in Softonic