Screenshot Captor enables you to capture images in a variety of ways, ranging from the active window to a fixed size zone and including objects, scrolling windows (great for capturing sites from top to bottom) and even your entire working space, which means that if you have multiple monitors, Screenshot Captor will capture all of them.

But the best is yet to come: Screenshot Captor includes an excellent set of filters and special effects for your screenshots: frames, borders, shadow effects, blurring and a lot more. We tried all of them and were really happy with the results, although the program could do with more extensive undo features.

We also found some really good tools in Screenshot Captor, like the ability to automatically generate thumbnails from images or a zoom that can go up to an impressive 999%. You can actually see every single pixel in the image! The app also boasts extensive task bar options, and a really nice mini-interface after taking a screenshot, both of which make your job much easier.

Screenshot Captor may feel overwhelming, but give it a chance, it's really worth it!

Download Screenshot Captor 3.08.01 in Softonic

Overview

If you take a lot of screenshots for creating tutorials, Snagit 11 is better than ever. Snagit 11 still has smart window detection so you can automatically select to capture a window or part of the window so you don't have to spend time cropping the image.

New features

For a long time, Snagit was only used to capture and annotate still images but that changes with Snagit 11. The biggest feature update for this version is the ability to capture video. You can now create screencasts using Snagit and upload them directly to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, an FTP server, or Screencast.com.

While Snagit can capture video and voice for screencasts, don't expect the full range of editing features that you find in TechSmith's dedicated screencast application, Camtasia Studio. Snagit 11 aims to make sharing short video tutorials easy. If you want more professional results for your screencasts, give Camtasia Studio a try.

Another big feature upgrade that you'll find in Snagit 11 is the ability to download more stamps and other annotation tools. If the current set of annotation tools aren't to your fancy, just hit the "get more" link inside the app to be taken to TechSmith's website. You can also download plugins for sharing on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and many more.

Snagit 11 also features improved text capture. If you take a screenshot of some text, Snagit automatically detects it and throws it into the Snagit Editor. From there, you can easily export it to whatever text editing program you'd like such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, and Evernote.

Overall, Snagit 11 is a great update for an already amazing program but those running Snagit 10 may not need the new features introduced in this version.

If you don't want or need better text capture, easy social sharing, or video capture, Snagit 10 will work just fine.

Download Snagit 11.1.0 in Softonic

YouCam and easily be the main photo and video application for your Windows 8 tablet. It launches quickly and has a ton of effects to mess around with. You can choose frames, video effects, photo effects, and distortion filters.

You can easily switch between taking photos and videos with the slider on the top right. Taking pictures is snappy and they show up immediately in the camera roll. YouCam allows you to add effects to photos and videos after they have been taken.

Other than all the silly photo and video effects, YouCam is pretty basic. There's an eye icon on the top left that allows you to "enhance" your image or video. I found that it just boosts the exposure.

Overall, YouCam is a simple, easy to use photo and video application that you can comfortably use as your default photo and video application on Windows 8. Its not as much of a copy of Apple's Photo booth as Photo Booth for Windows 7 and we appreciate YouCam trying to differentiate itself.

Although its effects are a bit gimmicky, its ease of use and snappy interface makes it a recommended program.

Download YouCam for Windows 8 in Softonic

Photo editing

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 photo editing tasks, including brightness, contrast and color adjustment, grayscale, blur, pixelate and other special effects.

Screen capture

But PicPick isn't just 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.

Other tools

PicPick has a selection of othet tools that you're not going to need every day, but when you do find yourself with a need to, say, pick a specific color on your screen, magnify something, or use a virtual whiteboard to "draw" on your screen. There are 7 of these tools, and although quite niche, they're a nice touch.

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

Download PicPick 3.2.4 in Softonic

LightShot replaces the standard PrtScr functionality in Windows and lets you take snapshots of your sceen, though only in two ways: full screen or user selected area. Once the screenshot is taken, LightShot displays a small bar at the bottom of the image with several options.

You can either save the image on your local drive, copy it to the clipboard or cancel the capture, plus two other interesting options: save the image online on a free file storage service – perfect for sharing with friends – or edit it in a surprisingly feature rich online image editor.

The online editor in LightShot enables you to work on the image in many ways, like cropping, transforming, adding new layers or even spicing it up with filters and special effects. When done, you can simply save the image to your hard drive in JPG, BMP or PNG.

LightShot is a nice replacement for the standard PrtScr functionality in Windows. It features an impressive online editor, but lacks more capturing options.

Download LightShot 3.2.0.0 in Softonic

Download ScreenHunter Free 6.0.227 in Softonic

This is what you get with EasyCapture: a handy capturing utility that includes all the tools you need to capture anything on your screen, from a tiny user-defined area to the whole desktop. You can use hotkeys for capturing and also open as many images as you want on the program's tabbed interface. Plus it includes some basic effects that you can easily apply on your photos. They may not be as powerful as Photoshop's filters, but they'll do the trick.

But what I specially like about EasyCapture is the ability to add clipart to the images. You can highlight text with a virtual marker, use rectangular shapes and arrows to draw attention to certain elements in the captured image, insert text fields and also fun text balloons to add annotations. Each one of these tools has its own settings to configure size, color and other elements.

EasyCapture has some flaws, that's true. For instance, the scrolling window capture mode didn't really work (it didn't scroll the window completely). Also, the Text tool doesn't show up changes in real time when you're editing the text, which is kind of annoying. But in general terms I found this to be an excellent capturing tool for an unbeatable price.

Capture anything on your screen and edit it with filters, effects and some fun clipart.

Download EasyCapture 1.2.0 in Softonic

The Jing interface itself, in its bubbly shape, almost feels like a web application instead of a real program. The Jing menu sits discreetly on the side of your screen and can be called up anytime. Capturing elements can be a bit confusing at first. Jing brings up a set of crosshairs that you will have to focus on the area of the screen you wish to capture. After that you can choose if you want a video or an image capture. The application features some limited editing tools like text, color or arrows, but these will often be sufficient.

The history feature in Jing is pretty cool and shows your recent captures as little thumbnails that you open up by double clicking. As to sharing captures online, you'll have to be logged in to screencast.com to make it work.

While Jing does tend to lag every now and then, it's set to be the perfect desktop companion for anyone looking to produce basic screencasts and captures.

Download Jing 2.5.47113 in Softonic

FastStone Capture is a minimalist application for taking screenshots that hides a plethora of tools and options under its small interface. The program includes several ways to capture images (full screen, active window, rectangular region, free –hand selected area, even scrolling window!) and works with all popular formats.

But the most powerful side of FastStone Capture shows up when you take a screenshot. The program displays the captured image and lets you work on it in several ways: add a caption, resize the image, apply a few special effects, draw free shapes on it, highlight a given area, etc.

FastStone Capture includes other interesting options like automatic saving and naming for files, support for keyboard shortcuts and the possibility to upload images directly to an FTP server.

FastStone Capture is a full featured image capturing tool that lets you not only take snapshots of your screen, but also edit them.

Download FastStone Capture 6.9 in Softonic