Looking for a Screen capturing tool? Try Donation Coder’s Screenshot Captor. It is the only screen capturing utility I know that can take a picture of itself.

Screen Capture utilities are good for presentations. People like pictures. And when something that can be technical — like webpage designing — is illustrated with graphics, interest can be awakened. A screen capturing tool is like a camera: one takes a snapshot of something on the screen, edit it a bit (adding effects and so on) and then save it as a graphical image that one can use whether on a webpage or in a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation. How do you think did I create the graphics for the NewsRoom Publication Manual?

There are other screen capturing utilities available on the web, of course. But Donation Coder’s ScreenCaptor is the best donationware around. It is “donationware”; no trial period is involved, it does not get disabled after some time, but it does nag one into contributing something for its development. DonationCoder however has a program where users are given a free universal license to all their software provided
certain requirements are met. I got my issue of ScreenCaptor through this program.

There have been really good screen capture tools that have gone commercial. Faststone Capture until version 5.2 (I think) was freeware. Now it is in version 5.6 and one will have to pay for a license to keep it. Not that there is anything unfair about this: FastStone Capture v. 5.4 + has a lot of features that one would expect in a commercial software. But here, I think, ScreenCaptor has an edge: it also has those features and more. Below is an image of ScreenCaptor’s SpecialFX tab; here, one can see how image editing is possible with this utility.

One of the early screen capturing tools I worked with was Mirek’s MWSnap. It is still distributed as freeware on the web. Development stopped in 2002 but people seem to continue to download it. I mentioned in another blog that MWSnap has other tools with it apart from its snapshot abilities: it has a ruler (good for measuring things on the screen) and a colorpicker. With it one can also edit the snapshots one makes, add a cursor for example, or put borders around the picture.

ScreenCaptor has the same editing capabilities: one can add arrows and cursors on a snapshot, and do this simply by a drag-drop process.

One can also resize snapshots with it, just as in any graphic editor

So if you can get ScreenCaptor, take it from DonationCoder. Who knows, perhaps Mouser (the author of
ScreenCaptor) will also give you a free license for it.

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