Graphic Apps

Greenshot

5  /  24 Reviews
8,884 Downloads
Sep 3, 2018 Last updated

Downloads

Description

Greenshot is a free, open source screenshot software for Microsoft® Windows®. You can use it to take all kind of snapshots of your screen (whole screen capture or just a particular region).

Once you have the screenshot, you can edit it, add notes, highlight certain areas or even obfuscate one or more parts. If you're pleased with the result, you can export the screenshot in several image formats, send it to your printer, clipboard, attach to e-mail, upload it to a photo site (e.g. Flickr®, Picasa®, and others), etc.

This utility is available under GNU General Public License, and it is available in over 30 different languages (though, you will have to download the translations separately from the main, official page - here).

Trademark Note 1: Microsoft®, Windows® and other product names are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

Greenshot Review

Note: When you install Greenshot, depending on which Microsoft® Windows® OS you use, you will be prompted to install a ".NET Framework". This program is written in the Microsoft.NET® framework so if you don't have it already installed (for example on Windows XP), you will have to allow the program to download and install the .NET framework. The latest versions of Windows® (e.g. 8, 8.1) comes with a version of .NET framework (usually 4.0) so when prompted to install, just skip this step.

Greenshot Highlights

Tip: This is a list of the most important features of Greenshot, however, a good place to start learning how to use this program is to access the "Greenshot Help" section which is also available in other ten major languages. Read the whole help section (recommended) or only the area you need.

Anyhow, here is the list of the most important features:

- make a screenshot in multiple ways: capture a region, the last region, a window, full screen or Internet Explorer.

- remove the mouse pointer from your screenshots (you will have to access "Quick preferences" and uncheck "Capture mouse pointer").

- customize the screenshot using different shortcuts (access "Preferences/Settings" - "General" and choose other hotkeys).

- change the export settings (there's a ton of options to choose from: open the capture in Paint, Microsoft Office, copy to clipboard, send it to your printer, open in an image editor, save it as a standard image - PNG, BMP, GIF, JPG, upload to Imgur, etc.).

- edit screenshots and add arrows, lines, rectangles, change colors, add text (comments)

- obfuscate one or more parts of your capture (sensitive data such as usernames, bank account, names, passwords, human faces, etc.)

Conclusion: I tried several other similar apps such as Snagit®, FastStone Capture®, Jing® and even bought a commercial license for WinSnap® a few years ago. The main difference between Greenshot and all the other commercial alternatives is simple: open source and all the benefits that come with it. Sure, it might not have certain features such as video capture which can be useful but still, new features are being added all the time, bugs and errors are fixed, and the most important thing is that development keeps going on, which is a major issue for most open source projects.

Finally, I can easily recognize a superb piece of software. Although, I already said it a couple of times before, please DONATE for a software gem: Greenshot, the free, user-friendly tool for taking and editing screenshots.

Found this software useful? Please consider a donation to the author.