There are simple ways to capture a screenshot in Windows – pressing the PrintScreen key captures a screenshot of the whole desktop. Pressing the PrintScreen and ALT keys at the same time captures a screenshot of the active window only – useful for capturing dialog boxes and smaller windows.
However, LightShot enhances the traditional PrintScreen and adds far more functionality.
LightShot is an easy to use screen capture program which can do a lot more than Windows – you can select just part of an area, create a web-link to the copied image for quick sending to friends/posting online and save the screenshot directly to computer. main features include:
- Free, simple and quick screenshot tool.
- Fast screenshot of selected area – allows you to select any area of the desktop and capture it with 2 clicks.
- Powerful capture – can capture video, Flash Player and Java screenshots too.
- Displays size of selected area in pixels – useful to crop a particular sized image.
- Save screenshots direct to PC – without having to paste into a graphics editor first.
- Copy screenshot to clipboard – and paste into any suitable application such as Word, Paint, Photoshop etc.
- Share Screenshots via the internet – upload your screenshots to server (uses Imageshack) to get a fast web-link to it. Quick send buttons for Twitter and Facebook or choose Email to get the web-link and post it to a blog/anywhere.
- Online editor – edit your screenshots as soon as you made them (uses Pixlr Editor).
Download LightShot
LightShot is available as a free Windows program from the developers here (see Installation Note below) – designed for XP, Vista and Windows 7.
Alternatively, there is a standalone LightShot browser add-on for Firefox here (5 star ratings) or an extension for Google Chrome here (4.57 star ratings).
Demonstration Video
The video below from the developer provides an overview of LightShot in operation:
Installation Note
The LightShot Windows installation program offers 2 installation options. I highly recommend selecting ‘Options Tuning’ and then untick all three Yandex options before pressing Next – as shown below:
If you choose the ‘recommended’ Full Installation (selected by default) it will download and install a Yandex (Russian) toolbar into every web browser on your computer – and may change the home page and search providers to Yandex too. It can be very difficult to get rid of these ‘features’ afterwards (uninstalling is not enough) and they are in Russian…
Conclusion
LightShot is an excellent screenshot capture program with powerful, yet simple to use, features. It includes dual monitor support and is able to capture from sources such as Java and Flash that many screencapture programs struggle with.
It is a shame that the ‘recommended’ installation option could sucker people into installing the Russian Yandex toolbar all over the place – I realize that freeware authors need to make money somehow but I find this toolbar particularly intrusive and, as it is in Russian, useless for most people.
It would be helpful to bloggers like myself if LightShot included the ability to upload screenshots to your own server via FTP so that you wouldn’t have to upload them separately later – but I guess the more options added, the less quick and simple it would become…
Its great to see this app finally getting what it deserves I have been using this for just about 2yrs .
I tried some of the other ones that are around but this one by FAAAAARRRR beats them
Its easy to use and fits right into Chrome so really all you need is to point ,click,drag,and click……