You take the shot
If you're looking for the most efficient screenshot tool but unwilling to spend money on purchasing similar apps, then Greenshot is just the thing. It is absolutely free for Window users since it is created and developed by GitHub Inc., a subsidiary company under Microsoft. If you grew up using Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch, well here's your total upgrade. This program will cover the basic features, plus some premium tools, you need and want for your professional work or personal purposes. It's not only easy to master but it will also make screen capping effortless and fun for you. Here's everything you need to know with Greenshot.
Additional premium tools
Greenshot is a free, lightweight screen capture tool which provides various features and services present on its commercial counterparts.
The program works with hotkey combinations that capture a screen, a window, or a region of your choice. It also allows you to capture a complete scrolling web page from Internet Explorer (for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 users). Just like other screen capture tools you've already used, you can instantly capture a screen image by holding down the mouse while dragging the active area along your chosen capture region. The program's green-tinted capture region is quite unique and visually appealing and allows you to make selections with ease. You can also open your screen caps in the program's sophisticated image editor which lets you add specific effects, texts and objects, resize, crop and rotate, and draw freehand on the image. The print screen button on your keyboard is the default setting for the program but you can change it to your preferred hotkey/s upon installing it to your desktop. This screen capture tool allows you to send your captured image to your built-in image editor, clipboard, printer, and even attach it to your email. You can also export your selected screen cap to Microsoft Office or upload it to your different cloud-based programs such as Dropbox, Flick, Imgur, Confluence, Box.com, JIRA, and Picasa-based web. Aside from its basic features, the program also provides you with premium features such as obfuscate and optical character recognition (OCR) for free. You can use the program's indispensable obfuscate feature to render a portion of the screen unreadable by either pixelation or blurring. While OCR plug-in will work perfectly if you have Microsoft Office installed on your desktop. This feature will detect texts on your screenshot which will allow you to put your selected texts on your clipboard. The program's installation wizard also lets you choose from a variety of plug-ins available for you to install, as well as lists of incredibly helpful interface languages displayed in their own form of script.
Where can you run this program?
Apparently, the program is a freeware originally created for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 users since it works perfectly with Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. You can access the download link on the program's developer official website. While if you're a Mac user, you'll just have to purchase the program for only $1.99 on App Store since the program was recently made available for Mac.
Is there a better alternative?
Greenshot's best selling point is that it claims to be a full-featured free screenshot tool which provides services just like the similar paid programs. Well, the program isn't perfect as it sometimes produces a mediocre quality of screencaps from a complete scrolling web pages unlike its $50 counterpart, SnagIt. This program offers the same capture options but adds a few more indispensable features for you to explore such as the ability to capture just a menu, text from a Window, images from a Web page, and video recording from your screen. In other words, the program allows you to screen record pretty much everything on your screen. When you capture or record using the same program, it will automatically open your screen cap in its full-featured editing tool which lets you choose tasks such as whether to include cursors and other notable tools for annotating your screen caps. The only thing that you can productively use with ease in Greenshot that cannot be compared with what SnagIt has to offer is the obfuscate feature.
Our take
The program may be far from perfect but it's just a fair trade for its free nature. Some of its best features are created for specific Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer users. You can only install the program for free on Windows while you should pay for it if you're using a Mac. It may not have all of the additional premium features you could actually get from its pricier rivals but it definitely provides you most of the basic screen capture needs with ease and manages to add some invaluable tools that some of the commercial counterparts overlook. This is simply the best free screen capture tool out there for you to try.
Should you download it?
Yes, absolutely. Since it offers more than the basic features of other commercial screen capture tools for free. You can also personalize and add more features to it by downloading available plug-ins. It's actually the perfect program for you if you're already using Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer on your desktop.
