How often do you take screenshots? Probably not too often, because the whole intake process can be quite annoying. Not that it is so hard because it is not, but sometimes it is not worth it. Well, no more. Greenshot lets you capture and share screenshots at the touch of a button by highlighting a funny chat conversation, recording a glitch, or simply saving a snapshot for later.
The usual way to take a screenshot, at least in Windows, is to print screen (which essentially copies the screen to the clipboard) and then paste the captured screen into a program like Paint. Then you have to save it manually. And if you want to share it, you have to upload it somewhere. Greenshot consolidates all these steps so that the next time you want to take a screenshot, you can do it in seconds.
First impressions
To be honest, Greenshot is not the first of its kind that I have used. My default screenshot program for the past year has been Puush (our review: Puush: take screenshots and share them instantly. Puush: capture screenshots and share them instantly. Image hosting and sharing sites are ubiquitous these days, especially given the widespread popularity of image macros and memes from around the web. Pictures please the eye and people are more… Continue reading), although I'm a little familiar with ShareX (our review ShareX: Screenshot Capture, Upload, and Share All in One ShareX: Screenshot) Capture, Upload, and Share in One Cape What if you could take a screenshot in any form and format at any time, all with a simple click of the mouse or tap of the keyboard. What if you… Read more) which is a bit more advanced. Honestly I had high standards as I gave Greenshot a test run and I can say I was not disappointed.
The way it works is that Greenshot sits in the background of your computer and does nothing until you issue a command. By default, the commands include a combination of Ctrl, Alt, and print screen. However, you can change the shortcuts in the settings at any time. There are several screenshot modes, and Greenshot can upload to an image hosting service on your behalf.
Greenshot is only available on Windows, but is FREE and open source under GPL. I consider Greenshot a complete feature, as it does what you would expect, but not much beyond that. Resource consumption is low (only 20 MB RAM is needed when idle). Therefore, it is a good choice for older computers and laptops as well.
Take a screenshot
If Greenshot is installed, you can take a screenshot by clicking on the icon in the taskbar and selecting the desired screenshot. Otherwise, it's faster to press the hotkey combination for the screenshot mode you want to use.
- Capture region. In this mode a cursor appears with which you can drag and select an area of the screen to capture. The cursor has horizontal and vertical lines (easier to arrange on screen elements) and a magnifying glass (for precise capture)..
- Record last region. If you want to capture multiple screenshots of the same region, z. B. to monitor changes over time, this as the name implies: screenshot of the same region that you last selected.
- Record window. In this mode you can select which window to capture with a single click. This mode is quite impressive as it can capture the entire window, just the contents of the window or even just the title bar of the window depending on where you click.
- Recording window from list. In such cases when you want to scan a window without selecting it, this mode is helpful. Due to its nature there is no hotkey. You need to click in the taskbar and select the window you want from a list. All open windows are included in the list.
- Record full screen. In this mode, the entire screen content is captured. Note: If you use multiple monitors, this mode only captures the active monitor! The active monitor is the one with the mouse pointer in it.
- Capture Internet Explorer. If you use Internet Explorer, in this mode the whole web page opened in the browser will be displayed as a screenshot. Very useful when you want to record a web page that is too long and requires a lot of scrolling. Unfortunately other browsers are not supported and I don't know if there are plans for the future.
Once a screenshot is taken, a popup menu appears at the cursor asking what you want to do with the capture: Save, Discard, Open in an image editor, Upload to an image site, etc. Very slick if you ask me.
Other properties
Aside from screenshots, there are a few other cool things you can do with Greenshot:
- Format and quality. Select the desired output format for the capture: GIF, BMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF and Greenshot format. If you select JPG, you can adjust the quality and reduce the color palette to 256 colors if you wish to do so.
- Save and export. Screenshots can be saved directly to your computer, copied to your clipboard, pasted elsewhere, sent directly to your printer, pasted into Microsoft Office, opened in MS Paint, or uploaded to an image service.
- Plugins. When you install Greenshot, you have the option to include a few different plugins, each of which is associated with a well-known image hosting site: Imgur, Box, Dropbox, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket. If you want to upload images to one of these services immediately, enable the plugin during installation.
- Interactive mode. If you activate this option and use the capture window mode, Greenshot dynamically displays which area of the screen to capture. This is very useful if you know exactly what you're going to get, and you'll see how powerful Greenshot can be.
- Image editor. Greenshot has a built-in image editor that lets you edit captured screenshots. Features include: Annotations, highlighting, obfuscation (to hide sensitive data), cropping, rotations, adding lines and shapes, and visual effects such as drop shadows and color inversions.
Conclusion
Screenshots don't have to be difficult or impractical to take. Greenshot takes care of all that, and all you have to do is press a few shortcuts. With other screenshot programs, there may be a number of flashy bells and whistles that may or may not be useful, but if you don't care for any of that, Greenshot is exactly what you want.
