Tech: Screenshot? no i said Greenshot!

Greenshot, screenshot, bleemshot.

Ever needed a screen shot and the print screen + ms paint option just isn't appealing?  I know I have certainly run into this issue in the past.

I know what you may be thinking:  The snipping tool will fix this, after all it is packaged with Windows 7 and it is a great little tool, however for a mere 545 KB download you can obtain your own copy of a wonderful little program: Greenshot.

Once installed (and set to run on start-up) the small icon pictured to the left will appear in your systray.  This contains various settings but all you have to do is press the Print Screen button.  once you do you will see cross-hairs and a transparent green box.  With these cross-hairs you can draw a border around the item you want a screen shot of by clicking and dragging around the object you wish to capture.   

Additionally while dragging you will see the dimensions of the captured image in pixels, which comes in handy if you are looking for particular dimensions in your screenshot.

Greenshot Editor

Once you release the mouse button you will see the image in a rudimentary image editor.  And although it is simple it is also powerful.  You can easily highlight, annotate, or obfuscate  portions of the captured image.  

There are also a myriad of other options,output to email or clipboard,  optimize for printing, capture the mouse pointer or not, and so on.

It is also possible to capture portions of the screen or selected windows.   And of course options you would expect, like image format default, file name pattern, and storage location.


With a price tag of free and and full features and utility Greenshot is top notch on my list and normally one of those programs I immediately install on  a new computer.

You can find it's website here. 

This little program comes highly recommended  by the Devoted Skeptic