Installation is just as easy as any other binary file installation. Follow the prompts, you know the routine. The EasyScreenshot interface is plain and simple and self-explanatory for the most part, as you can see:

There are a few things you need to know about this application, so this is a short tutorial to guide you through the screenshot tweeting process with EasyScreenshot. Click the Settings button to specify the folder that you want to save the screenshot in and specify other options.

Under the “Using the Image” heading, there are three options: Save To EasyScreenshot Folder, Prompt where to save and Copy Image to clipboard. Selecting the option to save to the EasyScreenshot Folder is going to give you a roundabout way to access the screenshot later on and it is really not a practical option, as you have to navigate to the folder and nobody has time for that and it is simply annoying. Rather, create a folder on your desktop and check the box next to “Prompt where to save” so you can easily find the screenshot at your leisure.

Now you can choose your TwitPic Uploading options. If you want to simply upload it to you Twitter account and tweet it later, don’t check “Tweet the screenshot” because it will instantly tweet it. To get any of it to work on you Twitter account, you need to enter your Username and Password in the field provided. After you have specified the desired settings, click the Save Settings button in the bottom pane. All you have to do is choose your screenshot and method of capture, take the screenshot and it is instantly uploaded or tweeted. That’s all there is to it!

You have shared the screenshot with your friends on Twitter now. This application is not for taking typical screenshots in the manner which you are accustomed to. It is specifically for sharing on Twitter. This comes in handy for business purposes when you need to quickly share a screenshot with an associate. They can then tweet you back and communicate whatever needs to be communicated and you can move on from there. The screenshot above was tweeted just for fun because the user thought it would be appreciated by his friends and is only an example of what you can do. Share selected areas or whole web pages with the option to include the URL and a message describing your intentions. Now go and tweet away!

Download EasyScreenshot here. The program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Web Page Thumbnails is a free software for Windows that can be used to take screenshots of any web page easily. You need to install the program first before it can be started and used.

All that is needed to do to take a screenshot of a website is to load the address in the Web Page Thumbnails interface. You can paste urls into the form or enter them manually. A click on Go loads the web page in the program interface.

You can capture individual pages with a click on the capture button in the interface. Users who want to take screenshots of all web pages that they load in the program can check the Always Capture setting to have the program take screenshots automatically.

The default format png can be changed to jpeg in the main interface as well. Links and other elements of the currently loaded web page are active, a click on a link loads the link target in the program for instance. This makes it very comfortable if multiple pages of the same website need to be recorded.

Users who want a full size screenshot of the web page need to modify the vertical or horizontal size of it in the right sidebar. The size is increased with the up and down cursor keys and not by typing in a different number. The program by default will capture the full scrolling window in the screenshot and not only the visible area.

All screenshots are saved to the My Documents folder. They can be opened there or directly in the program with a click on the Preview all captured images tab.

Web Page Thumbnails is a solid application for users who want to take screenshots of one or multiple web sites. The program could use an option to import a list of web addresses into the application to take screenshots from. It seems to rely on the Internet Explorer rendering engine.

Windows users can download the software from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system.

Sometimes however you may not be able to install desktop apps on your system, which is for instance the case in most corporate computing environments or if you happen to own a Chromebook. In those cases you may have to settle for the next best solution, which may be Webpage Screenshot.

When you click on the extension icon in the Chrome address bar after installation, you see the three options Visible Screenshot, All Page Screenshot and Beta: Edit Content in the context menu.

The first two options should be self-explanatory. You can use the first to take a screenshot of the currently visible area on the screen, the second to take a screenshot of the whole page which means that scrolling pages are supported by the extension.

The third edit option finally allows you to edit the page before taking a screenshot. You can for instance remove elements from the page or add text annotations to it.

The extension loads the created screenshot in an editor-like mode afterwards regardless of choice. Here it is possible to use some basic editing tools to make modifications to the page.

The edit toolbar contains options to add text, arrows, lines or shapes on the screen to highlight, remove or add information.

You can save the screenshot in the end to the local computer system, use the share button to upload it to the Webpage Screenshot image hosting service or print the screenshot on a connected printer.

The options, which can be accessed via a right-click on the icon or a click on Options in edit mode, can be used to switch from saving screenshots in the png format to jpg and to edit the image header and footer information.

Webpage Screenshot is a handy extension for Chrome users who take screenshots of web pages open in the Chrome browser regularly. The functionality is solid, and the ability to edit the page before taking the screenshot is nice to have. A blur option is missing from the edit tools option, the only workaround is to either edit the element before taking the screenshot or to paint over it afterwards.

Chrome users can download Webpage Screenshot from the official Chrome Web Store.

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)

Window operating systems allow a .chm file to be built using the distributed HTML Help Workshop and this is the most familiar method to most users. The help utility uses LZX data compression and has a built-in search engine. It allows the user to merge numerous .chm help files with extended character support but it does not support Unicode. The security risks that result from this are caused by the .chm file format which can and frequently does execute arbitrary code. As a result, users across the board have experienced security issues ranging from minor to severe, depending on the executed arbitrary code. This is obviously problematic and can be even more so when networks are involved. Nonetheless, Windows 7 users can still use the HTML Help Workshop to create .chm help files.

Compiled HTML help files can also be created using simple screenshots. The utility to achieve this can be obtained as a free download. The time-consuming efforts involved with HTML Workshop can be avoided and .chm help files can be formatted rapidly using screenshots. These can be used for user training purposes or as otherwise seen fit. This article presents a solution that is easy, free, and allows .chm specific help files to be made simply and indexed for easy reference. The software download is small and the file link is clean. There are templates for creating navigation links and product names, versions, company copyrights, and user developed titles can be added as well.

The software is called Helpinator 3 and the link is as follows: http://www.helpinator.com/downloads/createchmfromscreenshots.zip

The download is a zip file with two applications. Both applications need to be installed or Helpinator 3 will not work properly. Here is an example of the opened zip file and its contents:

Install in the order listed. When the program opens, the main screen opens automatically and a desktop icon is created. The project title, product name and version, and the company name with the year of entry are all entered in the appropriate fields. Mozilla Firefox version 5.0 was used in this example to create a help file for uninstalling plug-ins, with Ghack as the company name:

Screenshot are added by clicking “+”. Keywords and titles can be altered as needed. In this image, a screenshot was taken directly from the Firefox Help option and shows the keyword entry field at the bottom.

The .chm help file is created after adding the screenshot by clicking the lightning bolt icon in the toolbar and the file is then prepared. It can be found from the Start Menu or from the Helpinator 3 index.

That’s all there is to creating .CHM help files from screenshots. Best of all, help files can be made for any program or application in a short period of time.

The third and often best possibility is a software that takes screenshots in select intervals automatically.

Auto Screen Shot is a free software for Windows that can be used to do that. The software needs to be installed first before it is ready for usage. You see the following interface when you load the program after installation.

The first thing that you’d probably want to change is the save location for the screenshots. It is set to the root of drive c by default. Users of Windows 7 cannot save files into root by default. I’d create a new folder for the screenshots to make the organization easier. The two other options you have are the interval in which screenshots are taken and the image quality of the saved images.

The default interval is set to 10 seconds. You can change that to a custom minutes:seconds value if you like. The quality is set to 75%, which feels a bit low, especially if the screenshots are used in presentations or published online.

A click on Take screenshot now (Test) creates a single screenshot which you can use to examine the quality setting. A click on Start Capture takes screenshots of the desktop in the selected interval. You need to minimize the program window manually if you do not want it to appear on the desktop.

You stop the automatic screenshot taking with a click on Stop Capture. The button appears after you start the process.

A feature that is missing are hotkeys to start and stop the capture, and to take screenshots manually. All screenshots are stored in the selected directory in the format screenxxxx.jpg.

Auto Screen Shot works in all recent versions of the Windows operating system. You can download the latest version directly from the developer website.

The Windows operating system comes with options to create a fullscreen screenshow with the print key. You can paste that screenshot in your favorite image editor. Microsoft has improved the abilities of the operating system with the snipping tool of Windows 7. This tool can take full screen screenshots or screenshots of a region. The tool is still very limited on the other hand.

QuickScreenShots is a free portable software for Windows that can be used to take screenshots on the system. It supports full desktop, active window and region screenshots which should be sufficient for most users. Users can click on buttons in the application interface to trigger the screenshots, or use global hotkeys to do so.

The screenshots are shown in the program interface. Five options are listed on the right side. They allow the user to auto copy and auto save the screenshot. Auto copy moves the screenshot to the Windows Clipboard, while auto save saves it directly to the local hard drive.

A total of three effects can be added to each screenshot as well. This includes a shadow and black and white effect, as well as an option to rotate the screen by 10 degrees. Auto save, shadow and rotate have preference buttons next to them. It is for instance possible to change the rotation angle or the default save directory.

Four buttons a the bottom can be used to save, copy and view the screenshot.

QuickScreenShots is not as sophisticated as commercial tools such as SnagIt or WinSnap, but that does not make it a bad screenshot taking tool.

The thing that is missing most is a resize feature to resize screenshots before they are saved. This means that some post-processing needs to be done in an image editor or another program.

Windows users who are interested in the program can download a portable version or installer from the project website over at Google Code. It will run on all versions of Windows from Windows 9x on.

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.

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.

Most webmasters who take screenshots help themselves by moving the window that they want to take a screenshot of on a white background so that the alpha effects do not play a role anymore. The rounded corners on the other hand remain a problem.

Standard Screenshot

7Capture Screenshot

7Capture removes the background of the window before it takes the screenshot. It furthermore works perfectly with rounded borders as can be seen in the second screenshot.

Usage on the other hand is a little bit more complicated as the screenshot software does not provide access to keyboard shortcuts or a simple window selection option.

The program will list all open windows on startup with the option to refresh the display so that windows that are opened after starting the screenshot program are displayed in the list as well.

The screenshot taking process begins with the selection of the window the screenshot should be taken of. A click on the Capture button will capture the window and display the captured image in a preview window.

There are no controls in that window other than being able to scroll up or down if the screenshot that has been taken is larger than the 7Capture window and to save the screenshot to the local computer system.

Screenshots taken can be saved in various formats including jpg and png. There is furthermore no way to change the quality settings of the screenshots which can mean that the screenshot needs to opened in an image editor afterwards to do that.

7Capture is the only free – as far as we know – software that works with rounded borders and window transparency effects. It lacks additional functionality especially keyboard shortcuts and options to take non-window screenshots like those that only take a region on the screen or screenshots of scrolling windows. The software can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

The program, as the name suggests, requires the Microsoft .net Framework. The only other dependencies are an installed copy of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and codecs for the videos that the screenshots should be created of.

Some users might feel reminded of the program Imagegrabber II which provides a similar interface and functionality. Scenegrabber.Net offers 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 support, something that the latest version of Imagegrabber II does not.

A video can be loaded from the file browser or by dragging and dropping it into the program’s interface. It will start playing automatically and the controls on top make it possible to select specific scenes for the screenshots. It is also possible to let the program make the selection of the scenes by pressing the corresponding button.

A total of 30 screenshots will be created by default, a number that can be changed in the header as well. The created screenshots are displayed in the lower half of the program. Here it is possible to delete single scenes, preview the output and to configure the layout options.

Layout options include the information that are displayed on top of the scene compilation as well as color and font settings, jpg quality and the height and width of the individual shots.

Another interesting option of Scenegrabber.NET is the batch file mode which can be used to create screenshots of multiple videos without having to load each of them individually into the program.

Scenegrabber.NET is available for download at the developer’s website.

• Shutter’s feature list includes:
• Fullscreen, window, area screenshots
• Website screenshots
• GNOME integration with tray icon
• Session collection (each screenshot will be opened in a different tab in the Shutter window)
• Embedded drawing tool
• Upload/Export tool

I have used many tools for screenshots before. Shutter, however, blows them all away. No it is not as simple as hitting the PrntScr button, but it is far more flexible and powerful than anything like it. With that said, let’s install this tool and see how it’s used.

Getting and installing

I will be installing this in Ubuntu 9.04, so this tutorial will reflect that choice. You won’t find Shutter in your standard repository. You have to add the Ubuntu PPA repository. To do this you need to open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

You want to add the following to the bottom of that file:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/shutter/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/shutter/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Once you’ve added the repository you will need to then add the PPA gpg key with the following command:
wget -q http://shutter-project.org/shutter-ppa.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -

With the key added you can now update your sources with the command:

sudo apt-get update

and then install Shutter with the command:

sudo apt-get install shutter

Accept the dependencies and let apt-get do its thing. Shutter will be installed and you are ready to go.

Using Shutter

Figure 1

Basic usage of Shutter is simple:

1. Open up the tool from the Accessories sub-menu of the Accessories menu.
2. From the main window (see Figure 1) click the button that corresponds with the type of screenshot you want to take.
3. Save the screenshot in the filetype you desire

Here are some notes specific to each type of screenshot you will take:

Selection: When you opt to take a screenshot of only a section of your screen the screen will dim and an instructional window will appear telling you exactly what to do. You can scroll in to enlarge a section but this does not appear in your screenshot.

Full Screen: The full screen screenshot will not include Shutter in the picture.

Window:  A hand cursor will appear for you to click on the window you want to take the screenshot of.

Figure 2

For the most part Shutter works exactly as you would expect. There are some nifty features that you might not be aware of. For example, Shutter has an outstanding set of plugins to take advantage of. To use the plugins click on the Screenshot menu and select the Execute a Plugin entry. This will open up a new window (see Figure 2) where you can select a plugin to use. Say, for example, you wanted to add a watermark to your screenshot. You can do this by first taking the screenshot, and then opening up the Plugins window and selecting the Watermark plugin. You can then be specific about what you want your watermark to say, where you want it, and what font size you want.

There are a number of other cool plugins to use. Scroll through the list and play around to see which ones you like.

Website screenshots

Taking a screenshot of a website is simple. Click on the Web button and then enter the URL you want to snag. There is one thing you should know about taking a screenshot of a web site: Depending upon how long the page is, the screenshots can get rather tall. Taking a screenshot of the Ghacks page renders an image that is 1025×3459 pixels in size. Fairly large for a screenshot. Of course you can crop that image to use only what you need.

Final thoughts

Shutter is one of the finest screenshot tools available to Linux. If you haven’t used it you should immediately install it and use it. Be warned, you will wind up spending a lot time playing around with Shutter. It’s handy and it’s fun.

In this article you will learn how to take screenshots with the help of The Gimp, the GNOME menu, the Print Screen button, and ImageMagick. Each way has its advantages, so it’ll be up to you to decide which method suits you best. With that said, lets’ dive in head first.

ImageMagick

I wanted to start with this method because it can be a little flaky. The primary issue is that ImageMagick has trouble with Compiz. If you’re not running Compiz, you won’t have any issues with this method. Otherwise you’d be best served to skip down to The GIMP.

One of the benefits of this method is you can use it to grab screenshots automatically. You could even set up a cron job to take screen shots at specific times, or log into a machine remotely and snap a shot. I won’t get into the “why” you would want to do this – decide that yourself.

The basic command for taking a snapshot with ImageMagick is:

import FILENAME.png

Pretty simple. The only catch with the above command is that you will have to specify what portion of the screen to grab. When you issue that command a cross-hair will appear which you click and drag to select what portion of the screen to grab. There is an easier way. If you want to take this screenshot without interaction you issue the command:

import -window root FILENAME.png

What the above command does is take a screenshot of the root window (that’s the entire screen basically.) The screenshot will be saved (in the case of the example above) as FILENAME.png

Print screen

This one is simple (and not much different than using the GNOME menu)  you press the Print Screen button. When you do a window will open (see Figure 1) asking you to give the file a name, decide on a destination, and click save.  You can save the screenshot in .jpg, .png (default), .tiff, .gif, and .bmp formats. From this same window you can also copy the image to the clipboard for later use.

GNOME Menu

If you look in the Accessories subment of the GNOME Applications menu you will see the entry “Take Screenshot”. If you click on this the same window will open that opened when you hit the Print Screen key. This works in the exact same way. If, for some reason, you have a different keyboard mapping or a Print Screen key that does not work, this menu entry is sure to work.

The GIMP

Figure 1

The GIMP is my standard means for snapping screenshots.  Within The GIMP click on the File menu and then click on the Create submenu. From within the Create menu click the Screenshot entry which will open up the screenshot dialog (see Figure 1).

There are three types of screenshots you can take:

Single Window: This will grab only the window you click on after you click the Snap button.

Entire Screen: This will grab the entire screen after you click the Snap button.

Select a Region: This allows you to select the portion of the screen you want to grab after you click snap.

You can also configure a delay (in seconds) which will allow you to open up menus or take an action to grab.

When using The GIMP for screenshots you will have to save the image manually. But you can also edit the image before you save it.

Final thoughts

As you can see there are a number of ways to grab a screenshot in the Linux desktop. Each method is simple and should have you snagging screenshots all day long.

Snippy (via Technospot) provides the option to do freehand screenshots that can take any form the user wants. It looks much like cutting the important part of a website or application like you would cut a newspaper article.

A click on the Snippy icon changes the mouse cursor to a pen that can be used to encircle the area that the user wants to save, rectangular areas can still be saved by pressing the shift key. The final area will be send to the clipboard right away, if it was taken on a website the url of the website will also be send to the clipboard.

The software supports multiple monitors and the use of hotkeys to start the capturing process. Definitely an interesting program that has a size of only 84 Kilobyte.

By default a new screenshot is created every 5 seconds in png format that is covering the whole screen. The taking of new screenshots can be started and stopped in the application and it is definitely a good idea to pause while entering user data or other personal data.

The user can select several different formats for the screenshots and play the “movies” on a day by day basis. The program can be configured to delete images that are older than a selected number of days.

I can see some uses for this, for example to create a production diary when working in applications like Photoshop or a video editing application. The pro version comes with several handy features like excluding certain applications from the process.

CmdCapture is a small command line tool that can make screenshots of the current command line. Since it is a command line tool it is driven by parameters which are explained when entering CmdCapture.exe /h.

The easiest way to create a screenshot of the command line is to run the application without parameters. It will save a screenshot in the same directory in png format with the date and time attached to the filename.

Three additional parameters are supported by the software. The parameter /f can be used to pick a custom filename and file extension. Supported are png, jpg, bmp, tif and xpm.

The /d parameter can be used to specify another directory for the created screenshots. Finally the /q parameter changes the jpg quality level which makes only sense if jpg is used as the file format.

The software only works with Quicktime compatible formats. Basic use essentially means picking a movie and clicking on the Go button. There are some advanced parameters the user can play around with like thumbnail size, number of columns or snapshot interval.

Matthew Merkovich created a gallery of images that he created with Thumber including Black Hawk Down, Bulletproof Monk and Equilibrium.

Falls into the modern art category, don’t you think ?

If so, meet an interesting start-up called ScrnShots. Besides having a fancy 2.0 name it provides you with a few effective tools for keeping the screenshots you take in order and for ease of linking to them and embedding them into a web page. One of such tools would definitely be tagging that can be applied on each image to make it easier for you to find your way to it later on. The function allowing the user to view existing screenshots in an orderly manner through the web interface surely comes in handy too but the thing I find most useful about this service is that it prepares a few links to various sizes of the picture for you to simply copy&paste these into your site to have the pictures embedded as links which take you to the host upon clicking them. Here, viewers can leave comments on your screenshots and view them in full size. One last thing especially addicted screenshotters could appreciate is getting a personal RSS feed updating anyone who should be interested in new shots you take and a partly customizable widget made up of 1 up to 10 thumbnails of your latest “artwork”.

ScrnShots preview:

All this would be kind of clumsy if you had to use ScrnShots’ online uploader every time you want to share a screenshot. Fortunately there’s a very lightweight (5 files) desktop version of the uploader available for download from here that makes it possible to snap certain area on your screen and tag/describe the image before uploading it. There are versions for both Windows and Mac, however, I got an error message when trying to run it on my system. Hopefully that only happened on account of the application being a 0.7Beta and the new version to come will be working properly. If you do give it a try, please let me know whether the desktop uploader worked for you or not.

The typical process after configuring the settings in SHUP looks like the following. The user presses a hotkey which either takes a screenshot of the desktop or the active window. That screenshot is then displayed in a basic image editor where it is possible to resize the image, change the filename, tags, image format or use a rectangle to edit and upload only a selection of the image.

The image will then be automatically uploaded to the default file hoster and the url of that image automatically pasted into the clipboard. That’s a fast and easy way of creating and uploading screenshots.

Six file hosters are currently supported including Flickr, ImageShack and Photobucket. Some require usernames and passwords that have to be added in the configuration, the upload will obviously fail otherwise.

My suggestion would be to turn off all those confirmations  to speed up the process a little bit. Shup adds itself to the right-click menu as well. Whenever you right-click an image you can access SHUP and use it to upload the file to an image hoster which is a very nice bonus.

I was not able to figure out how to upload images directly without having to open the image editor first. Think that is not possible.

Visitors can browse the screenshots by using the tagcloud at the top of the main page, by browsing the pages that display twelve screenshots each or by browsing the random images that are shown in the left sidebar. That’s pretty much all I can say right now about Social Shots.

What I like is the tagged approach which makes it easy to find screenshots of games that you like or want to play and the easy way to navigate the website. The biggest con is probably that there is not much content yet, only fourteen pages of screenshots which means there are currently less than 200 screenshots available.

I guess it could become a pretty solid niche website if they manage to interest enough active users who upload screenshots regularly. Getting their hands on “soon-to-come” game screenshots would probably boost the traffic quite a lot.

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Social Shots