Screen Captures

UPDATE: I have since found a better screen capture software and I wouldn’t expect anything less from this company, TechSmith, who also developed Camtasia. It’s Jing. Give it a try it’s absolutely FREE.

Until I found Jing I had been using the free version of Screen Hunter to capture screenshots for my posts. It is so simple to use. It has a magnifying square feature that helps you to capture exactly what you want. There are two other paying options but I have only used it to capture screenshots.

FastStone Capture is a screen capture utility with built-in editing tools. You can capture windows, objects, menus, full screen, and scrolling windows/web pages. The captured image can be sent to an editor, file, clipboard, printer, email, Word/PowerPoint document or a website.

Editing tools include resizing, cropping, sharpening, annotating, applying effects, watermarks and many more. Captured images can be saved in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF formats. FastStone Capture is classed as shareware. Shareware is software that can be downloaded free for you to try out. It may be the full version, which will be available for a certain amount of time before you then need to purchase it.

CamStudio is open source (free) software that you can use to capture all your screen and audio activities to create a AVI file. I have used this software and it only takes a short while to get to grips with it.

For editing my videos I have been using Microsoft Movie Maker that comes free on my version of MS XP.

Camtasia Studio is software for creating videos. It can be used to produce training and presentation videos. There is a 30 day free trial.