FastStone Capture

There are situations when you may need to capture the desktop and save it as an image file. For example, in case a program displays an important message on the screen and you would like to recall it. Or when a software produces an error and you would like to show it to the developer of the application. You could use Windows for capturing the desktop, but this will turn out to be a bad idea. That's because capturing the desktop using Windows requires following a lot of steps. You first need to capture the desktop and copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into MS Paint, and just then, save it as an image file. This process can be really lengthy, especially if you need to trim or cut a certain portion of the screen.

FastStone Capture is a much better idea in this case, as it's a very simple Windows program for capturing the desktop in several ways. The application installs rapidly and it's easy to use from the moment it's launched. That's because the small graphical toolbar that appears on the screen when the program is launched is intuitive enough to be used by anyone.

The user has several possibilities of capturing the desktop, either by selecting a certain region, active window or the whole screen. After the capturing process is over, a new window will be displayed, where the user can fine-tune the captured image and can save it as a file. Using this part of the program, one can customize a screenshot in several ways. For example, he can add some caption text or a watermark to the image, for personalizing it. He can also adjust some of the image's characteristics, like the number of colors or the brightness.

After the editing process is over, one can save the screenshot in one of the many image formats supported. Additionally, he can send the image directly to MS Word or PowerPoint and he can even upload the image to a FTP server, directly from the interface. This feature can save the user a lot of time.

But FastStone Capture doesn't only limit to capturing the desktop and saving it as an image file, as it can also record the desktop and it can save it as a regular video file. There are numerous video formats supported, each having its own quality settings. For making it easier to capture an image, various shortcut keys can be used.