Snap Install is a specialized program that can be used to take screenshot sequences effortlessly. It has been designed specifically for making screenshots of installation procedures and product manuals.

The program is completely controlled with the mouse, which is handy and comfortable on the one hand, but also restricted on the other.

The program displays an initial configuration menu on startup. Here you define the title and author of the project as well as the save location of the screenshots on the local system and an optional logo.

Once done click start to begin taking screenshots. You take screenshots with a middle-mouse click after selecting a screen with the left mouse button.

Each screenshot gets saved into the selected directory as a png file automatically. You do not see a dialog or editor that interrupts the process (if notifications are enabled on the system you see a notification in the system tray area). This is a very comfortable way of creating multiple screenshots in rapid succession.

You still may need to edit the screenshots that you have created afterwards, considering that their resolution or size may not fit the document.

You can create a pdf document with all screenshots automatically in the end. I’d say that is not such a good idea considering that you may need to edit the images before creating such a document. Another issue here is that all images are used in the creation, which is a problem if you have created some screenshots that you do not want in the document.

I have a few issues with the program that limit the program’s reach and functionality. It is for one not possible to map the screenshot taking to a different mouse button, which means that you may run into conflicts in programs that use the middle-mouse button for other operations. This is usually not a problem if you do a screenshot series of a program installation, but screenshots for a product manual could very well be affected.

The second issue is that you can only take full window or screen screenshots. You cannot select a smaller part of the screen for the screenshot. This may lead to additional editing work after taking the screenshots.

Regardless of that, if you are looking for a convenient program to take a number of screenshots in rapid succession, then Snap Install may be the program that you are looking for.

The portable software is compatible with all recent versions of the Microsoft windows operating system. You can download the software from the developer website. (via)

MS Paint on the other hand is an excellent tool for creating a quick screenshot of either the whole computer desktop or a single application window. Yes, there are better programs out there like MWSnap, Screenshot Captor or PicPick, but Microsoft Paint is sometimes all one needs or got for that matter.

Windows users can take screenshots by pressing the Print screen on the keyboard, they can alternatively press Alt-Print if they want to take a screenshot of the active window instead. Laptop users often need to add the Function key or Ctrl for this to work.

The screenshot will be stored immediately in the Windows Clipboard. Please note that the clipboard only saves one entry which means that new screenshots will overwrite old ones, even text that is copied will overwrite the data in the Clipboard.

The easiest way to open Paint is to click the start orb and enter Paint in the run box. Pressing enter in the end will open the image editor. Windows XP users will need to click on run before they can start the Paint application.

Press CTRL-V in Paint to paste the screenshot into the editor.

screenshot microsoft paint

It is now possible to save the screenshot right away or edit it in Paint before doing so. All it takes to save the screenshot is to press Ctrl-S in Paint, this will open the File Save As dialog with an option to name the screenshot and select an image format for it (or keep the default png format).

And that’s all one needs to know how to create and save screenshots in Windows using Microsoft Paint.

While Firefox users might not even consider reading on as their browser features several add-ons that make it possible to capture complete webpages (for example the excellent Screen Grab) other users might be interested. The user selects the output directory and image format of the screenshots in the main interface. Watermarks can be enabled optionally in the program interface.

A core browser engine will be displayed once the initial settings have been made. It is basically a very down to the core browser with options to load urls and to navigate on those websites. The browser window features a big Take Screenshot button that can be used to instantly take a screenshot of the current website.

Simple Webpage Capture might be a solution for users who want to quickly take screenshots of webpages but do not have Firefox or a browser with full screen capture capabilities installed. Combining the default web browser with screen capture possibilities is however the more natural way.