Updated: May 18, 2019 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews » Photoshop & Image Editing

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You can take screenshots directly in Windows and paste them onto Microsoft Paint, having said that, if you are looking for something feature rich, you will need a third party tool. Why pay for a software when there are plenty of open source and freeware available? After going through a number of these screen capturing tools, we’ve shortlisted these 10 tools and tricks as the best for your daily productivity.

Alternative Article ➤ 11 Free Software for Video Capturing, Game Broadcasting and Online Streaming

↓ 01 – Edge’s Web Note | Microsoft Edge Browser

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1. The Movavi Screen Capture Studio is a relatively lesser-known screen recording software for Windows, but don’t let its obscurity in the domain mislead you, as the Movavi offering is packed with all the core screen recording and video editing tools, and then some more.
2. For starters, GarageBand for Mac includes handy prebuilt song templates to get you started with your new songs. For example, the Songwriter template includes all the tracks you need to record a basic song demo with drums, vocals, guitar, electric guitar, bass and piano/keyboard.
3. Screen Recording Software for Mac is designed to capture all screen activities while you work on the Mac display. The best screen recording software should be able to capture videos in HD quality that is critical for coding tutorial and game demonstration videos.

Surprisingly the best screen capture tool for websites is none other than Microsoft Edge in Windows 10. What makes Edge the best is with a click on a button, you have the screen captured and a ‘pen’ tool to scribble. Pros: It’s a built-in function that is easily accessible. Cons: Annotating options are limited and it captures only the visible things. Microsoft Edge is the only browser that lets you take notes, write, doodle, and highlight directly on webpages. Then you can save and share your handiwork in all the usual ways. Make notes on recipes, send your partner “subtle hints” about birthday gifts, or just draw mustaches on celebrities—the web is your canvas.

↓ 02 – Microsoft Windows | Windows

The other method is none other than the ‘Print Screen’ button. Hit the ‘Print Screen’ button and ‘Paste’ it to an image editor such as Photoshop. To capture a perfect window without the background, use the combination “Alt+Print”.

↓ 03 – ShareX | Windows

If you’re looking for something powerful yet free, ShareX is the answer. It is free, open source, lightweight and free from advertisements! It comes with advanced screenshot capture, screen recorder, file sharing and productivity tool with features such as capturing screenshots including full screen, window, monitor, region, freehand, scrolling, and more. It also contains tools like a screen color picker, an image editor, a ruler, a DNS changer, a QR code generator, a directory indexer and more.

↓ 04 – TechSmith Jing | Windows | macOS

Today we are sharing with you a list of the top 5 screen recording tools for Mac that you can use for free. It will make the process of creating lessons, tutorials, product reviews, and even presentations a lot easier.

Jing is a computer service that lets you capture basic video, animation, and still images, and share them on the web. The always-ready program that allows you to instantly capture images and videos—then share them with anyone. Jing is a great tool for adding basic visual elements to all of your online conversations.

• Capture what you see – Capture an image of what you see on your computer screen with Jing. Simply select any window or region that you want to capture, mark up your screenshot with a text box, arrow, highlight or picture caption, and decide how you want to share it.
• Record what you’re doing – Select any window or region that you would like to record, and Jing will capture everything that happens in that area. From simple mouse movements to a fully narrated tutorial, Jing records everything you see and do. Jing videos are limited to five minutes for instant, focused communication.
• Send your video or screenshot – Send your screenshots and videos all over the web. As soon as you’re done with your screen capture or screen recording, it’s ready to upload to Screencast.com and share through IM, email, social media, and more.

↓ 05 – Windows Snipping Tool | Windows

You can use Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image. Simply use a mouse or tablet pen to capture any of the following types of snips:

• Free-form Snip. Draw an irregular line, such as a circle or a triangle, around an object.
• Rectangular Snip. Draw a precise line by dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.
• Window Snip. Select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, that you want to capture.
• Full-screen Snip. Capture the entire screen when you select this type of snip.

After you capture a snip, it’s automatically copied to the mark-up window, where you can annotate, save, or share the snip.

↓ 06 – Lightshot | Windows | macOS | Chrome | Firefox

Lightshot – easy screenshot tool, is screen capture tool for Windows that works very much like the Snipping tool in Windows Vista and 7, with the added advantage of automatically uploading it online for sharing or editing. Available also as Firefox addon, Chrome extension and IE addon besides Desktop application.

• Fast screenshot of selected area – Our app allows you to select any area on your desktop and take its screenshot with 2 button-clicks.
• Easy-to-use application – Simple and intuitive user interface makes your work with the app easier and faster.
• Share screenshots via Internet – Upload your screenshot to the server and get its short link right away.
• Powerful editors – You can edit screenshots instantly when taking them or later using a powerful online editor.
• Similar image search – Find similar images. Select any image on your screen and find dozens similar images.

↓ 07 – Lightscreen | Windows | Linux

Lightscreen is a simple tool to automate the tedious process of saving and cataloging screenshots, it operates as a hidden background process that is invoked with one (or multiple) hotkeys and then saves a screenshot file to disk according to the user’s preferences.

↓ 08 – Greenshot | Windows

Being easy to understand and configurable, Greenshot is an efficient tool for project managers, software developers, technical writers, testers and anyone else creating screenshots. Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features:

• Quickly create screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; you can even capture complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer.
• Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot.
• Export the screenshot in various ways: save to file, send to printer, copy to clipboard, attach to e-mail, send Office programs or upload to photo sites like Flickr or Picasa, and others.

↓ 09 – DuckCapture | Windows | macOS

DuckCapture allows you to capture a window or region on your screen, or the contents of a tall web page that scrolls. You can change your captured area or add more areas to one image, add annotations. When finished, you can save to file, copy to clipboard or print out directly. DuckCapture comes with four capture modes that make screen capture easy! Capture a window on your screen, region of your screen, or the contents of a tall web page that scrolls. You can easily edit, and share a screenshot. Don’t waste time cropping your captures. DuckCapture is exactly what you need.

↓ 10 – PicPick | Windows | macOS

Specially designed for the home user and aiming at giving as much flexibility as possible during the work. It even includes some features never to be found in Photoshop. PicPick, besides being a very easy to use image editor also sports graphic capture options and a set of hotkeys and options some similar editors would envy.

• Capture anything – Take screenshots of an entire screen, an active window, the scrolling windows and any specific region of your desktop, etc.
• Edit your images – Annotate and highlight your images: text, arrows, shapes and more with the built-in image editor that includes the latest Ribbon style menu.
• Enhance with effects – Easily add effects to your images: drop shadows, frames, watermarks, mosaic, motion blur, brightness control and more.
• Share everywhere – Save, share, or send your images via Web, email, ftp, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter and more.
• Graphic Accessories – Variety of graphic design accessories including color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, magnifier, whiteboard.
• Customizable setting – With highly advanced settings, you can customize hotkeys, file naming, image quality, and many other options that fits your needs.

↓ 11 – Shutter [ Discontinued ] | Linux

Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot program for Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu. You can take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website – apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

• Capture – Shutter allows you to capture nearly anything on your screen without loosing control over your screenshots (tabbed interface).
• Edit – Especially if you are taking screenshots for writing tutorials or manuals you need to edit the image, e.g. highlighting some part of it. With Shutter you don’t need to open an external graphics editor like GIMP, because Shutter ships with its own built-in editor.
• Share – We all spend much of our time in forums, wikis, chats etc. From time to time we need to do some screenshots and upload them so we can share them with other people.
• Plugins – Shutter ships with a great variety of plugins that allow you to add impressive effects to your screenshots.

What should you do to get a screenshot of your Mac? If you are a Windows user, you will be satisfied with the Snipping tools. It is a powerful utility with four different modes, Free-form Snip, Rectangular Snip, Window Snip, and Full-screen Snip. But the software is only available for Windows now. The article will explains the best 5 alternative snipping tools for Mac. If you do have a desired software, you can share the features in the comments.

1. Grab

Grab is default snipping tool for Mac of Apple, which provides a default solution to get screenshot with hotkeys. It should be the most frequently used method as the alternative. Just learn more detail about the method to cut the desired snipping with hotkeys.

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• 1. Shift + Command + 3 to capture the whole screen, by default, the solution for the whole screen is 1280*800.
• 2. Shift + Command + 4 to capture a custom rectangle, you can click and drag over the screen region to the desired part.
• 3. Shift + Command + 4 with Space, which enables you to capture a specific window. You can move the mouse cursor over the desired windows to get the part.
• 4. Esc to cancel the process of snipping.

All the screenshot will be saved to the desktop automatically in PNG format. Of course, you can also use the snipping tool to Mac to save the screenshot to other format, such as JPG, TIFF, PDF, PNG, BMP or PICT. Here is the command line you should enter when you want to change file format.

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format
killall SystemUIServer

2. Snip

Snip is another software, which is able to capture the active Window or custom areas. What is more, it can automatically identify windows. As one of the most popular free Mac snipping tools, there are many excellent features you can enjoy, especially when you need to put a large number of files to Word.

• 1. Add labels, texts and handwriting contents of your choice and save it to your device or the clipboard.
• 2. Snip can identify windows open automatically, and you can also custom the area manually according to your requirements.
• 3. There are some special tags, such as rectangle, ellipse, arrow, text and even draw with handwriting brushes.
• 4. The Mac snipping tool supports a custom location, size and color.

3. Skitch

Skitch is another favorite snipping tool for Mac, which is developed by EverNote. It is able to take multiple screenshot and annotate them without problem. Skitch includes an interesting UI widget that helps you take the screenshot simple and coherent. Just learn more detail about the special features of the Skitch as below.

• 1. The powerful annotation marks restore the visual element to remote communication just as standing next to someone.
• 2. The snipping tool for Mac also provides a fuss free way to save your work or attach them to email in convenience.
• 3. It has more functions than the Windows snipping tools, and more importantly, it makes everything interesting and funny.
• 4. And there are other sharing and editing features that make the screenshot just as your requirements.

Generally speaking, Skitch is an easy and fun to use snipping software for Mac. Just run the software, open up an image, annotate and send them. The software lets you visually highlight images to help your point.

4. Snagit

Snagit should be the powerful solution to create and edit screenshots. The snipping tool is compatible with both Windows and Mac. And you can also use it for mobile capture as well. You can download TechSmith Fuse for Android or iOS phones to capture screenshot for mobile. And then send photos and videos from mobile device straight to Snagit editor.

• 1. Creating Animated GIF feature should be my favorite, which turns any short screen recording into an animated GIF. Show off quick tasks and workflows without a large file size.
• 2. It not only customizes and edit every screenshot, but also provides professional quality markup tools. And even convert to the right formats.
• 3. It is able to take a full-page screenshot, which is able to grab the horizontal, vertical, or entire scrolling area within just one click.
• 4. It is able to capture wide, horizontal scrolls, infinitely scrolling webpages, and everything between.

It is a powerful snipping tool for Mac, which grabs your entire desktop, a region, a window, or a scrolling screen. Grab any webpage or application, which requires a single hotkey or click.

Tipard Screen Capture

In order to quick screen capture and recording for your desktop, Tipard Screen capture should be the best snipping tools for Windows alternative. It is not only capture screen, record online video with best quality, but also customize the screen size, set capture time and cursor and more. Just learn more detail about the All-in-One software for Windows.

• 1. Tipard Screen Capture is able to capture screens in high quality, which helps you capture screen movements and actions easily.
• 2. The Snipping tool is also able to record audio files both from computer or microphone.
• 3. You can also preview the video once you complete the process of capturing screen.
• 4. The software supports multiple online video sites, video and audio formats according to your requirements.
• 5. Easily customize the screen size according to your needs.

Besides the functions, you can also use some editing features to create some professional video tutorials, capture some interesting screenshots, or grab some online streaming videos. It should be the ultimate snipping tools for you.

Conclusion

Just as mentioned, when you need to search for the best snipping tools for mac, the default Grab for Mac should be initial choice. When you need to add special annotations, Skitch can be taken into consideration. As for the users with OICQ or need some small size software, you can choose snip. In order to use the snipping tools for Mac, Windows and smartphone, Snagit is another solution to get the desired screenshot. Tipard Screen capture is the ultimate software to capture screen, video and audio files of your computer, you can always snip the desired files. If you want to share more detail about the desired Mac snipping tools, you can add them in the comments to us now.

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