If we often work in writing guides, articles, documentation or posts in the forums, and to create articles on the blog, you will surely find the programs to make screenshots useful. Taking a screenshot means capturing the image of the desktop or a specific area and saving it as an image file with JPEG extension. There are several ways to save your PC desktop as an image on Windows, even without programs .
Simply press the Print / Stamp button and then paste the result into any photo editing program to save it. In Windows 10, then, you can then press Stamp and the Windows key together to immediately save the image captured by the screen in the Images folder. Furthermore, pressing the Alt + Stamp keys together takes a picture of only the foreground window.
Instead, pressing the Windows + Shift + S keys opens the Windows 10 image capture tool, which allows you to select the area to be saved, drawing the area in various ways, with the tools at the top. If you want to open the screen capture tool on Windows 10 only by pressing the Print key on the keyboard, you can activate the option in Settings> Accessibility> Keyboard .
If, however, we wish to have more control over the type of image to be captured or to choose the area to be captured, perhaps adding arrows or blurs immediately (useful for hiding personal data), it is better to use a dedicated screenshot program. In this guide we will show you the best programs to save the desktop or a selected area as an image, also indicating the procedures to follow to succeed in the purpose.
READ ALSO -> How to photograph the PC screen
Compared to other similar guides, where we find only a list of programs, here we will show you how to install them and how to use them to capture the full screen or a selected area, so to choose the one that best suits your needs.
1) Icecream Screen Recorder
The first program that we recommend you use is Icecream Screen Recorder, one of the simplest and most immediate.
It allows you to take screenshots and also make videos of what is happening on the desktop (screencast). Once installed, simply open it, click Screenshot at the top and choose one of the options on the capture bar, including the Area button to capture a specific area of the screen (a window or a portion of the desktop).
To quickly capture the screens we can use the keyboard shortcut, which is basically Ctrl + Shift + T. To change the screenshot immediately, all we have to do is click on the Draw button once the capture is finished.
2) ShareX
Another good free program to save a desktop or a specific area is ShareX .
This powerful program allows you to organize screen capture in an advanced way, choosing in advance what to do after the capture and after the modification of the image. It offers shortcuts and shortcuts to capture the full screen, the selected window, a custom area or just the inside of a browser, so as to have maximum control over image capture.
After the capture we can send the file to the internal editor (to edit the image with arrows, numbers, writings and apply blur effects to hide parts), automatically save the file (not a custom name) or we can automatically upload it to a photo shoot online already preconfigured. Within the program we can find numerous tools, such as image resizer, color capture, preview generator, QR code generator, file uploader on FTP server, add an image or a watermark and much more . Currently this is the best screen capture program that we can try on Windows, although it requires some practice to be able to use it to the fullest.
We personally recommend configuring the program as follows: let's start it, right click on its icon in the systray at the bottom right, select the Operations menu after capture and enable the Annotate image and Save image as items, so as to immediately open the internal editor after capture and, when finished making changes, open the save file screen in a folder of your choice in Windows. The rest of the options should be tried personally, since it is possible to configure it for any scenario.
3) Automatic Screenshotter is the program to use if you want to take pictures on your computer screen on a regular basis, automatically. The default acquisition interval is 5 minutes. By pressing the right mouse button on the icon you can display the settings window and set a different Acquisition frequency (in seconds). By putting a very low value, the program will make numerous screenshots saving them all on the disk (be careful they take up space). The program only captures the current window or takes a photo of the desktop if no window is open. Screenshots are not captured when a full screen application or a screensaver is open.
4) PicPick
Another very good program that we can try thankfully on on Windows is PicPick .
This program comes with a very familiar interface, reminiscent of Microsoft's Office programs and looks like a light tool, simple to use but powerful enough to be able to perform any activity related to the capture of screenshots on Windows. The best thing about this program is the ability to work with several screenshots together so that you can speed up the image capture process while installing another program.
5) Other programs to save the desktop
If the programs we have reported to you do not convince you, below we can find many other valid programs for screenshots, some for free others for a fee:
- MWSnap, a free program characterized by being very small and light and which allows you to capture images from the selected windows, the entire desktop, or a predefined rectangular part of the screen.
It also has a simple text editor, it is in Italian and does not require installation to work.
- Greenshot is a small executable file that should not be installed very simple which allows you to capture the desktop or an area of the same and save it.
- Faststone Capture is a simple program that works well for saving desktop images.
- Screenpresso is an excellent tool, perhaps the best free program on the list to save screen sections as image files
- Screen Capturer is a program to be installed on the PC that allows you to save the images captured by the screen in BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, or TIFF.
It also allows you to capture video in Windows media video (WMV) format.
- The best paid screenshot program is called SnagIt which costs 50 Dollars (35 Euros).
If we need a professional and extremely simple to use program, SnagIt is truly excellent and full of options to customize the image capture methods.
The level of customization is almost unlimited and includes a powerful image editor that offers all the tools necessary to publish a perfect image, perhaps with text and graphic retouches.
Currently the only one that manages to compete with SnagIt is ShareX, which approaches the quality of the options and tools.
In another article, we talked about how to take screenshots in Windows 7 and save images from the screen .
