Discussion on:

Five versatile screen-capture apps for Windows

Press Print Screen and paste to MS Paint.Snipping Tool is real good too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu0lqUlHEko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq8TagYEuB4

I manage over 300+ user computers. After trying many of them I have found Greenshot is by far the best app as it is flexible in its application and just works. It's also free. http://getgreenshot.org.

I agree with Anthony, Greenshot is the best, opensource and free.

It's old, but it's reliable, and it suits my needs. And it's free. (Yes, it's adware, but the ads are unobtrusive). It's available on download.com and sofotex.com

Unfortunately, I don't think it's actively supported any more; the developer's website is parked on Google.

error messages, but a lot of my customers have vast needs and Snagit is their tool of choice, quite useful they say, so I will give it a thumbs up on their behalf.

Built into Vista/Win 7 Snipping Tool is nice for basic screen captures. Includes highlights and a pen tool.

it has built-in screen capture capabilities.

I have also found Snagit to be the choice from my users and I also found the sipping tool builtinto Windows good enough for most everything. But I have really found the PSR.exe (problem steps recorder ) a really good tool when i need information about what someone is doing ona computer.

This is a utility we use at work. It's apparently an old one (the support page for the 4.00 version we use lists a Geocities site, http://www.geocities.com/~gigaman). But it works great on our WinXP machines, and I'm considering trying it at home as well.

Nice features it has:

*100% freeware. Per the About screen, it's available "For Free Use of an Individual or Company", so the price is hard to beat.
*Easy keystrokes. By default, just use the existing PrintScrn key on your keyboard, & it will automatically take a screenshot of the visible desktop. If you don't like that, you can change it to CTRL+5, CTRL+F12, or specify a specific CTRL+key that you want to use. You also have the choice of adding ALT to just capture the active window -- say, for example, if you're trying to write a walkthrough with screenshots, but only want the particular program to show up.
*Easy use. By default, the program is minimized in the system tray, & only pops open when you hit the designated hotkey. The main window gives you menu & shortcut buttons to:


*save the screenshot as a picture
*load a picture into the program
*copy the screenshot into the Windows Clipboard for pasting into another program (or load the Clipboard)
*use a drawing-style tool to select a rectangular section of the visible desktop
*edit the screenshot in your default picture editor
*print the screenshot to your default printer (or select a different printer)
*make adjustments to the screenshot before printing

Only caveats:

* Closing the app. By default, hitting the red "X" minimizes the app (or use Esc). That's good, because you can use it again; unfortunately, that's also the only method (short of using the rectangular selection tool) to be able to get a fresh screenshot. Right-clicking the icon in the system tray closes the program completely; unfortunately, so does right-clicking on the app's name in the Taskbar & selecting "Close".
* Getting fresh screen shots. As I said, the only way to get a new screenshot is to minimize the app, or use the manual selection tool. However, since my agency uses this to print from remote-access mainframe apps where the built-in print functions only print to their on-site printers (i.e. off-site for us), we mainly use it in "screenshot - print - Esc - redo as needed" mode.

I use free Evernote to capture long articles. Otherwise, Greenshot works well for me. Will check out ZScreen. Thanks for the tip!

There is also the option of Jing, which is free to download and use. Features are limited but it does a decent job for the price!

http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/
Free for personal use, pro version $25.

ScreenshotCaptor From http://www.donationcoder.com/

And there is MiniCap, ScreenshotCaptor's little brother.

Been using it (and other great software) from them for some time. They are free but a donation to them would help.

If your organisation uses lotus notes/lotus sametime, there is a neat little tool in sametime to capture parts of screens and you can annotate them as well. I've used when producing documents.

I use DuckLink Capture. Lightweight and free. http://www.ducklink.com/

...try Gadwin PrintScreen - does what you need it to do, & it's FREE!!!

I like MW Snap
http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html
and is free.

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned IrfanView. Can save with a keystroke (Ctrl-F11), will name and date files, can save in PNG and other formats, and it's free. Of course, it does a lot more than screen capture, so likely you will already have it installed.

Snap4 or the newer Snap5 by Ashampoo is a fullfeatured application that should be
included in your recommendation.It has a unique and easy to use interface.Everybody
i showed it too were very impressed.

I agree with lionbose that Snap 5 (or the earlier versions) are excellent utilities that allow you to capture and edit just about anything on screen (including videos, scrolling windows, menus, freestyle areas, etc.) and should be included in your list,

I use Wisdomsoft Screenhunter...free app but you can buy for $19.95 if you want to get full capability. All you have to do is press F6 key and it will take the shot of exactly what you are selecting. It uses an x-y axis that you use the mouse to select. Really great app!

I will say that Snagit is probably the most powerful for the resources used.
http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html

Evernote is the most useful in general.
https://www.evernote.com

Lightshot is the best for sharing and providing tech support. It has a feature where it uploads to a temp server then you can send a client or a friend a link instead of a huge file. Many other simple features also.
http://lightshot.skillbrains.com/

Personally I like Corel Capture for my personal use.

Jing, SnapShotter, Webinaria, BandiSoft, SMRecorder, Expression Encode Screen Capture, Office One Note, Cam Studio Recorder, LightScreen. They are all free and great ScreenCapture tools.

Given that it's free and given that after several years of use, I have yet to encounter any issues, it's proven to be reliable.

This is a nice little tool. Free as well. SCREENSHOT CAPTOR-- http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/screenshotcaptor/index.html

For video capture I have worked with the free Microsoft Expression. The only problem is using the included Encoder to save in the format of choice. Lots of encoding options for quality. I have used this to record some stubborn videos that the usual video download tools don't work for. If you can view it, you can record it.
I didn't see anyone mention that alt-printscreen captures only the selected window instead of the whole screen for standard captures.