Wallpaper Manager

One of my biggest complaints about most wallpaper managers is a lack of a functional full-screen mode. IrfanView can open a picture full-screen or you can make one full-screen from a window (double-click the image). You can see the next and last images with the space bar and backspace key. You can go through an entire folder in this manner, seeing what a wallpaper really will look like before selecting an image.

Once you have found the new wallpaper you want, there are several key combinations to set the image in place. To center an image, use crtl+shift+c. To tile an image, use ctrl+shift+t. To stretch (and possibly skew) an image, use ctrl+shift+s. To stretch (without skewing) an image, use ctrl+shift+x. The last shortcut as added in the most recent version of IrfanView, so be sure to update the program.

To create a shortcut to open an image full-screen, you will need a few things. You have to specify the path for IrfanView, your image, and the /fs switch. The “fs” stands for full-screen. It should look like this:

i_view32.exe D:\Wallpaper\Image.jpg /fs

Tip: Start with a shortcut of IrfanView. Right click the shortcut, select “Properties,” and add parameters after the program path. This ensures you have the correct path to the application.

Randomize Wallpaper

A shortcut can be created that can randomize your wallpaper from a file selected within a folder or list. Place it in your “Start Up” folder to have a new wallpaper every time you boot your computer. Place it in your “Scheduled Tasks” to have it change in any intervals you want. You can always put it in the Start Menu (or even on the desktop) for convenient access.

To create a shortcut to change your wallpaper, you need to specify the path to IrfanView, the folder with the images, and the image types. After that, use the parameters shown:

i_view32.exe D:\Wallpaper\*.jpg /random /wall=0 /killmesoftly

Screenshot Maker

IrfanView has a great screen capture tool. Just press “C” to use it. It will bring up a dialog box that lets you grab the whole screen, just one program, or an area/box you draw with your mouse. Other settings can be found here, such as the file name pattern and directory (such as one in a network share or Dropbox). You can then use a key combination to activate the capture or set an automatic, repeating timer.

You can create shortcuts to use the screen capture features directly. There are a lot of options in the help file. More than likely, one of these two is the one you would want to use.

Capture the foreground window:

i_view32.exe /capture=2

Capture a rectangle selection:

i_view32.exe /capture=4

Basic Image Editing

While IrfanView is mainly a viewing tool, it does have image editing features. It will not replace powerful tools like PhotoShop or GIMP, but it will complement them. Fast load times, precision selections, and bag of tricks make it more useful than you might expect. You can resize, crop, and convert image types with ease. Enhancing an image or making it black and white is done with one click of a menu item. Adjusting the brightness/contrast, and tweaking the hue are all can be performed through intuitive dialog boxes. You can even blur, sharpen, use other filters (e.g. oil painting). All of these things are right in the Image menu.

Summary

IrfanView is a versatile tool. If you are just using it to view images, then you are not using its full potential. As you can imagine, taking screenshots is something a writer here has to do often. Being able to do it quickly, and right the first time, makes the work easier. Have some other clever uses for IrfanVIew? Let us know in the comments.

Shotty is another free program for Windows. The first release candidate of version 2 has just been released, and it looks like the program could replace MWSnap on my computer system.

Shotty can be used by clicking on the program icon in the Windows system tray, or by pressing the program hotkey to take a screenshot. The program is able to take a screenshot of the desktop, a region on the desktop or a window. Low quality and high quality options are available for the latter.

Each screenshot taken is loaded into a simple image editor automatically. This editor supports adding text annotations to the screenshot, diffusing areas to hide elements, drawing rectangles and adding textmarks to highlight parts of the screenshot and cropping the screenshot. It is then possible to copy the processed screenshot back to the clipboard, save it to the system in formats such as png or jpg, or print the image on a connected printer.

Shotty 2 furthermore supports uploading the screenshot to image hosts. Supported are five image hosts of which one can be selected as the default host. Urls, HTML or BBCode links are displayed directly in the program window after a successful upload.

Image host integration is just one of the features that Shotty offers. The extended settings hold a lot of additional configuration options. It is possible to configure autosave in the program which speeds up the saving by saving to a preconfgured directory. The fastest way of saving screenshots is however to change the default action from Edit to Save in the right-click settings.

Other options include adding a watermark to screenshots, change screenshots when Aero Glass is enabled (like changing color for the screenshot or disabling transparency) and configuring proxy settings which are only important when uploading screenshots to image hosting sites.

Shotty has a lot of potential. It lacks some features that users may need, like the ability to take a screenshot of a scrolling window. The program sometimes does not take screenshots properly. It happened that it added screen contents that were not part of a window to the screenshot so that the screenshot had to be edited before publishing it.

Still, the final version has not been released yet which means the developers have some time left to fix those elements. Shotty itself is available for download at the developer website. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0. (via Beatmasters)

The first and last option display a selection menu to download the screenshot to the local computer, copy it to the clipboard, share it with the image hosting service imm.io or send it to an online editor for immediate image editing.

Sometimes it is necessary to create a screenshot of a custom screen area, that’s where the second command is for. This option on selection displays a rectangle on the screen that can be modified in size and moved around on the screen.

The processing options remain the same once the correct position and size have been found.

firefox screenshot

The process is really simple and does not take more than a few seconds to complete. This means it is possible to create screenshots of the whole Firefox screen, or only part of the screen in no time.

The image editor requires Adobe Flash, and provides everything one would expect from an online image editor. It is accessible without the Firefox extension as well.

Some of its features are support of multiple images, layers, image manipulation, filters, image adjustments, resizing, rotating and a lot more. Very handy if no good image editor is available on the system, especially since it can be used without registration.

pixlr image editor online

Next to those options, Pixlr Grabber supports sending images on a web page right to the image editor for editing. This can be done by right-clicking on images with the extension enabled in Firefox.

Finally, it is possible to remove or reduce the options in the right-click context menu and the status bar.

Pixlr makes it dead easy to create screenshots in the browser. This coupled with the free to use editor are a solid combination for users who need to take screenshots and edit images in the browser regularly.

Screenshots with Aero effects enabled look unprofessional, largely because of the transparency effect, as the underlying colors of windows or the desktop are automatically included in the screenshot.

Take a look at two screenshots of the same window, the first with Aero enabled.

screenshots windows aero

screenshot without aero

The second screenshot was taken with the portable software Shotty, and Windows Aero enabled. An alternative to that is to change the default theme of Windows Vista or Windows 7, so that Aero is disabled. This allows the creation of screenshots without transparency and shadow effects.

But Shotty is probably the better solution for many users, who want to work with Windows Aero, but need to take screenshots without Aero effects.

Shotty comes with an installer, that offers to install the program or extract it and make it a portable application. An icon is placed in the system tray upon startup, which contains configuration settings, and links to program features.

shotty screenshot

Screenshots are created by pressing Ctrl-Print on the keyboard, or by left-clicking the system tray icon. Both can take screenshots of the full screen, or a single window, but not a custom selection.

Shotty takes high quality screenshots by default, this and the default keyboard shortcut can be changed in the program’s options.

The screenshot is displayed directly in the included (basic) image editor if the keyboard shortcut has been used to take it. The system tray icon on the other hand offers controls to directly save the screenshot, send it to the editor or to one of the supported image hosts.

shotty controls

The image editor includes several popular image editing options, including the ability to highlight or diffuse an area, add text to the screenshot, or to cut the image to keep only the selected region.

image editor

Screenshots that have been edited may be saved to the local computer, uploaded to one of the supported image hosts, or discarded. Shotty supports four different image hosts currently. There is unfortunately no option to add a custom ftp server to the upload options.

Shotty is an excellent tool to create screenshots in Windows, especially for users who regularly take screenshots but do not want Aero effects included in the shots. The download is provided at the developer’s website, the program is compatible with Windows 2000 or alter and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, which is included in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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.

WebPage ScreenShot for Google Chrome offers that functionality. The extension places an icon in the Chrome address bar after installation which, when pressed, displays options to take a screenshot of the visible area or the whole page.

webpage screenshot

The extension displays the screenshot of the page in a new browser window. Here it is possible to change the zoom level, open the editor for same basic image editing or save the screenshot directly by right-clicking the image and selecting Save Image.

Editing options are displayed on the same screen. It is possible to add text to the screenshot, change the orientation, draw elements or cut the image if only part of it is of interest.

Google Chrome users who regularly create screenshots of web pages should take a closer look at the WebPage ScreenShot extension.

We have reviewed several applications in the past that can take screenshots including MWSnap, PicPick, Greenshot or Screenshot Captor.

Lightshot is an alternative for the Windows version of the Google Chrome browser. The screenshot extension can be used to take screenshots in the web browser. This limits the reach of the application but might be just what some Google Chrome users are looking for.

The screenshot extension adds a button to the Google Chrome address bar that the user can press to take a screenshot of the web browser window. There does not seem to be a way to take a screenshot of scrolling pages, only the visible area can be captured.

Keyboard shortcuts are available to streamline the process. It is for instance possible to press Ctrl C to copy the selected area to the Windows clipboard. The Ligthshot extension displays several buttons around the selected area which can be used to save the screenshot, send it to an online editor, post the screenshot on Twitter or Facebook or change the borders of the screenshot area.

Users who want more control or to take screenshots of other applications can also install the Windows software version of the Lightshot screenshot taking application that comes with additional keyboard shortcuts among other new options.

A configuration window is displayed on the first startup of the application. It can be used to make some default configuration changes like selecting the default picture format, external image editor, design and the default profile. And the profiles are one of the features that not many other screenshot taking applications offer.

Most applications use profiles to provide access to capture different areas on the screen. Not so JShot which uses profiles to distinguish between different upload options. Available for selection are ftp, ImageShack and Skype integration with Skype only available for Windows users.

JShot offers to take screenshots from a region, fullscreen, computer desktop, widgets, taskbar and clipboard (only working if an image is in the clipboard). The program adds a tray menu icon by default to the operating system that can be used to quickly access all of the features of the program. Another option to run the program are hotkeys which unfortunately did not work on our Windows 7 Pro test system.

The screenshot editor supports basic image editing features like adding text and other elements to the image, rotating, flipping or cropping the image or applying basic filters to it. It is here possible to send the image to an external image editor.

JShot is an interesting screenshot capture tool. The missing hotkeys make it less usable for computer users who regularly have to take screenshots and we hope that the developers will fix that feature so that it can be used in future releases.

The Skype, ftp and Imageshack implementation on the other hand is a very strong feature that not many (for Skype it seems to be unique) other screenshot taking applications offer.

The program can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

This will by default send the screen or the window to the default printer in Windows. The settings of the program can be used to change that behavior in many ways. It is for instance possible to change the default behavior to copying or saving the screen, window or a rectangle among other options.

That’s however not the only way to access the additional features that Hardcopy offers. Hardcopy places a printer icon on every window title which when pressed will also initiate the configured action. Three different actions can be configured that are triggered by pressing the left, middle and right mouse button.

The main window of Hardcopy offers basic image editing options which can be useful to quickly edit the screenshot before publishing or sending it.

Probably the most impressive feature of Hardcopy is the amount of computer memory that it needs to run. It uses less than 2 Megabytes of computer memory, usually even less than 1 Megabyte.

Hardcopy is available for all Windows operating systems at the developer’s website.

It can be somewhat cumbersome to capture a screenshot in Grab, and then have to move it into a program like Photoshop to manipulate it. And if you want to share the image, you have to change its format.

An alternative piece of software is Skitch, screen-capturing software for OS X. Skitch provides screen-capturing facilities similar to Grub, but integrates some editing tools and also provides tools to share the images.

Skitch allows users to draw on screenshots and annotate them, through placing arrows and text. One can also make images have a transparent background, crop images, add a drop shadow to them or rotate them.

One of the cooler features is the ‘drag’ feature. When a screenshot has been captured and edited, if you click ‘drag me’, you can drag the image to a folder, an email or to open in another program.

Skitch can export images as JPEGs, PNGs, PDFs, SVGs, TIFFs, GIFs and JPGs. It can also upload images to Flickr, FTP servers, WebDAV folders and skitch.com, their own image hosting service.

The software boasts many features and I find it much better to use than Grab, as there’s no need to have to use other pieces of software.

Windows screen shot software programs like Screenie make it easier to create screenshots of parts of the computer screen. We already reviewed quite a few in the past including our favorite screen shots taking software MWSnap but also screen capturing tools like Greenshot, Screenshot Captor or Jing.

Screenie is another Windows screen shots software on first glance. It displays the contents of the current computer screen in its interface as soon as the user hits the Print key on the computer keyboard. From there it is possible to save the screenshot right away, zoom in and out of the image, select a rectangle that should be saved or edit it further in the default image editor.

The screen shot can be stored locally, added to the Windows Clipboard, uploaded to a ftp server or to Imageshack. It is possible to save them right away without seeing the interface of the application at all. Screenshots can also be saved to multiple locations simultaneously which might be interesting for users who want to keep a local copy but need to upload it to an ftp server or Imageshack.

Probably more unique than the export feature is support for dual and multi-monitor systems. We were not able to test this feature on the test system as no second computer monitor was connected at the time of the tests. The Windows screen shots software does come with a timer which works similar than a timer on a digital camera. It will create a screenshot after a specified amount of seconds have past.

Screenie is an interesting screen shot taking software. It is a bit high on the used computer memory while running and could use a few more screenshots that would make it possible to select part of the screen for the screen short immediately.

This might be useful for several purposes including documentation and verification. The graphical user interface displays all elements on one screen. The user can select a single or multiple websites at the top and define the file output format. This requires some explanation as time and date variables have to be added to avoid overwriting previous screenshots. Both date and time variables can be combined in the filename directly. All parameters are explained on the programs homepage, here are two examples for a better understanding:

• c:\%date:MMyyyy%\ghacks.pg – creates a month and year folder and saves the screenshot there.
• c:\%time:HHmm%ghacks.jpg – creates a filename in the format hourminuteghacks.jpg

The better part of the interface is occupied with several options. The program allows to define the width and height of the web browser and whether scrollbars, JavaScript or Flash should be disabled. The size of the (simulated) web browser can be automatically extended if the website turns out to be larger than the size defined in the interface.

Finally part of the screenshot can be cut of automatically as well. A click on the start button will take one screenshot of the website and save it in the selected folder. Enabling the “Take a screenshot of this web page every” allows to capture the screen every x seconds, minutes or hours.

The command line parameters come in handy for usage in batch scripts, file launchers or in situations where no graphical user interface can be loaded.

You can invoke the tool by pressing the print screen button (you can bind it to anywhere else), and the tool will pop up. It has a great mechanism because you can draw on your desktop before you create the “snip”, so depending on what you draw you might decide you need a bigger area. You can then use a box or a freehand tool to select the area you need and snip it.

Once that is done the snipped image will sort of hover on your desktop in a very cool way, you really have to see it to appreciate it, take a look on the website above or at youtube directly. You can save it to the clipboard, edit it with Paint or your can save it to your hard drive. My only problem was that the edit option opens up Paint and apparently there is nothing you can do about this. Since you can send to clipboard it’s not that bad, you can open it up in Gimp or Photoshop by simply pasting, but since you can choose saving format, timer option and so much, to me the inclusion of this feature would have been obvious. Great looking app though, give it a go!

Greenshot, a screen capturing tool for the Windows operating system, does not only offer to take a screenshot of the desktop but also of a selected window or custom rectangle. The results can be send to the default image editor, saved as a jpg file to the computer, printed on a connected printer or added to the clipboard. One of the interesting aspects of Greenshot is that several of the processing ways can be selected. A user could copy the screenshot to the clipboard, save it in a selected image format and print it at the same time.

The print screen key will be utilized as the main hotkey for the screen capturing process. Pressing the print key will make it possible to take a screenshot of a rectangle that the user can draw on the computer screen. Pressing Alt and the print key will activate windowed mode which allows the user to take a screenshot of a window and CTRL plus the print key will take a screenshot of the full screen.

Greenshot’s options contain various settings that can be used to customize the output. The user can select the image format, the filename pattern, storage location and image quality of the screenshots. There are also several print options like shrinking or enlarging screenshots automatically to fit the paper size.

Greenshot comes with its own image editor that can be used to add shapes and text to the screenshot before saving a final version to the computer system.

The screen capturing tool will remain in the system tray all the time. The only drawback is its computer memory usage of around 35 Megabytes. The previously mentioned MWSnap uses less than six Megabytes of computer memory.

Screenshot Captor by Donation Coder Mouser is another screen capture software and it feels like comparing Wordpad with Microsoft Office Word. Screenshot Captor was recently released in a new version and it provides functions that many users will find attractive and useful.

It obviously supports capturing various parts of the computer screen like program windows, selected regions, fixed sized regions, the entire screen but also scrolling windows and objects which is one of the additions in the new version.

The screen capture software can be managed from the program’s interface or by using hotkeys – which can be changed to preferred key combinations – to speed up the screen capturing process. The process of capturing a screenshot is not slower than capturing a screenshot with MWSnap.

Screenshot Captor shines when it comes to processing a captured screen. MWSnap was only able to save it in various formats while Mouser’s software can add elements to the screen before saving it. It is nevertheless possible to simply save it and use it that way. Users who like to add text, images or objects to screenshots on the other hand will find all the tools they need to do just that.

By default Screenshot Captor displays a small dialog after taking a screenshot that can be used to print or save the image, copy it to the clipboard or create a thumbnail of it plus various other possibilities. That dialog can be disabled in the program’s options but it is quite useful for those users who want to take a screenshot and save it right away with processing it further.

Captured screenshots can be shown in the main program interface where they can be processed. The image can be resized, text can be added, sections of the screen can be highlighted and objects added.

Previous screenshots are shown in the capturing history which provides a fast way of accessing them from the program’s interface. Another interesting option is the support for third party tools. It is easy to integrate them in Screenshot Captor and use them to process the images further.

The homepage links to a few additional tools that can be integrated like a color chooser to discover the exact color of a pixel of the screenshot.

The screen capture software should be the right application for anyone who takes screenshots regularly. Users who process their screenshots afterwards will find all the tools they need to do just that without the need to install an image editor to do so.

Update: Screenshot Captor 3 has been released. I suggest you check out the review linked above to find out what’s new. Among the new features are automatic screenshot uploading options, Windows 7 window transparency support and the best scrolling window capturing options that you find in a screen capturing software.

Purrint changes the default behavior of the Print key in Windows to one or several of the following functions: Copy the screenshot to the clipboard (default Windows behavior), save the screenshot to a file automatically and print to the default printer. The location on the hard drive where the images shall be saved can be selected as well as the filename. Purrint adds a number which is increased by one every time automatically.

The last option sends the screenshot directly to the default printer where it is printed. It is also possible to initiate a prompt whenever the Print key is pressed. This will then offer all three choices to the user and the user can make one or more choices in that menu.

I almost forgot, the file type can be selected as well. The default file format is bmp which can be changed to jpg, gif and png. Wonderful lightweight application.