Software for easy screen prints

September 10, 2007 12:13 PM

Can you recommend a free/shareware application for saving .jpgs of the active window with a hotkey? No nags/spyware preferred.

Yes, I realize I can do this with Ctrl-PrintScrn, but I have to do this a lot and I'd rather not have to open an image editor everytime to crop out what I don't want. Also, willing to pay for useful shareware.

posted by Roger Dodger to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

SnagIt (one of my favorite pieces of software) can do this. 30 day trial period, $40 to buy.
posted by phoenixy at 12:23 PM on September 10, 2007

Best answer: IrfanView is your tool. Free, fast, small, does exactly this (and much, much more.) Basically, you work in a window, hitting the hotkey whenever you want to take a screengrab (or active-window-grab), and it fills a folder with numbered images.
posted by pocams at 12:27 PM on September 10, 2007

I use FastStone Screen Capture. Hit the print screen key and then just save.
posted by gfrobe at 12:37 PM on September 10, 2007

Freeware MWSnap does all of what you ask on Windows.
posted by enfa at 12:39 PM on September 10, 2007

I also recommend SnagIt. An awesome tool that I use almost daily, with lots of cool features (like capturing a scrolling window or just a section of window).
posted by CountZero at 1:04 PM on September 10, 2007

Vista has this built in with the Snipping Tool application. You'd have to assign your own hot key (easy to do under the properties of the start menu shortcut). The default is to give you a crossing window but under snipping tool's option you can set it to take a selected window.
posted by Mitheral at 1:27 PM on September 10, 2007

alt-printscreen captures just the current active window.
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 2:43 PM on September 10, 2007

I second phoenixy's recommendation of SnagIt. It's the best screen capture tool I've used.
posted by sipher at 2:56 PM on September 10, 2007

A bit of a by-way, because you are on a pc, but you never know, you might consider switching if it's really important: on a mac keystroke command-shift-4 brings up a crop tool, with which you can select any area of the screen, this will be saved to the desktop as png.
posted by londongeezer at 3:20 PM on September 10, 2007

I just switched over from SnagIt to open-source ZScreen
posted by cwhitfcd at 6:40 PM on September 10, 2007

SendMessage(WM_PRINT)

It ain't hard.
posted by jeffamaphone at 7:33 PM on September 10, 2007

Try Gadwin ScreenPrint

Lots of options
posted by sandpine at 2:12 PM on September 11, 2007

Response by poster: First one I tried was IrfanView, and does everything I need it to, plus a whole lot more for free. Looks like he is getting some money from Google as well, since you have the option of adding their toolbar.
posted by Roger Dodger at 3:00 PM on September 11, 2007