QuickScreenShots, Portable Screenshot Taking Application

As a blog owner I know of the importance of screenshots to visualize the textual information of each individual post. For that, they are even more important than other media like videos, considering that not everyone can or likes to play videos while reading an article. But screenshots are also important for search engine visibility. There are other situations where you may need to create screenshots, for instance when creating PowerPoint presentations, writing your midterm paper or resume. The Windows operating system comes with options to create a fullscreen screenshow with the print key. You can paste that screenshot in your favorite image editor. Microsoft has improved the abilities of the operating system with the snipping tool of Windows 7. This tool can take full screen screenshots or screenshots of a region. The tool is still very limited on the other hand. QuickScreenShots is a free portable software for Windows that can be used to take screenshots on the system. It supports full desktop, active window and region screenshots which should be sufficient for most users. Users can click on buttons in the application interface to trigger the screenshots, or use global hotkeys to do so. The screenshots are shown in the program interface. Five options are listed on the right side. They allow the user to auto copy and auto save the screenshot. Auto copy moves the screenshot to the Windows Clipboard, while auto save saves it directly to the local hard drive. A total of three effects can be added to each screenshot as well. This includes a shadow and black and white effect, as well as an option to rotate the screen by 10 degrees. Auto save, shadow and rotate have preference buttons next to them. It is for instance possible to change the rotation angle or the default save directory. Four buttons a the bottom can be used to save, copy and view the screenshot. QuickScreenShots is not as sophisticated as commercial tools such as SnagIt or WinSnap, but that does not make it a bad screenshot taking tool. The thing that is missing most is a resize feature to resize screenshots before they are saved. This means that some post-processing needs to be done in an image editor or another program. Windows users who are interested in the program can download a portable version or installer from the project website over at Google Code. It will run on all versions of Windows from Windows 9x on.