Take better screenshots with Greenshot, and print or email them

Screenshots are very useful for explaining problems and their solutions with Windows. The Snipping Tool introduced in Windows Vista was a big improvement on Print Screen but Greenshot adds several other very useful features.

Installation is simple and includes the choice between English and German. Many other languages are available from the Greenshot website. It is set to start with Windows by default but this is easy to disable.

It can play a sound on capture and you can choose to either include the mousepointer or not include it. It can also be set to delay the grab from the keypress. This is useful if you want to include a menu that would disappear when a key is pressed.

Rather than capture the screen with the keypress, pressing the Print Screen button changes the cursor so you can select the exact area you wish to capture. It's a small disappointment that it cannot autodect windows as Techsmith software such as Camtasia or Snagit can. However, pressing Alt and Print Screen grabs the currently selected window.

The screengrab can be opened in the Greenshot editor. There is a cropping tool in case of any inaccuracies in the capture process. Lines, arrows, squares and circles can all be added to grabs to highlight areas of interest. Attention can also be drawn by highlighting an area.

The reverse of this is also possible. This makes an area look so blocky that text cannot be read, essential if you don't want to give away user names or passwords.

Text boxes can be added to provide more information on the grab. These are transparent so only the text covers the grab.

Sadly none of the file formats that Greenshot can save support layers. This means that the annotations are fixed when saved and cannot be edited again later on. We recommend saving the raw grab first and then saving a copy once annotations have been made.