Friday, April 20, 2012

Take & Share Screenshots At Lightning Speed With ScreenSnapr [Windows]

Take & Share Screenshots At Lightning Speed With ScreenSnapr [Windows]:
The old process of saving and sharing a screenshot was a tedious and annoying one. Typically, it’d involve pressing the Print Screen key, opening up an image editor such as Paint, saving the screenshot, and then heading over to a service like Tinypic or Imgur to upload and be able to share that screenshot with others. As you can imagine, repeating this process any more than about five times in an hour should be enough to drive you insane.
When I discovered ScreenSnapr, it’s sort of like the clouds opened up in the sky. It’s one of those programs where you think to yourself “why didn’t this exist a few years earlier?” Not only does it dumb down and speed up the entire process, but it makes for a really effective tool to do even more with your screenshots.

Download ScreenSnapr

ScreenSnapr is completely free. Though there is a paid version of the software, all core functionality is available to you at no cost.

The idea is quite simple: ScreenSnapr wants you to be able to click a button or press a key, select an area, and immediately have that area in a screenshot and ready to be shared. It sounds simple, and that’s exactly how it operates.
After downloading the software, you’ll need to create an account. The account serves an awesome purpose, as it’ll allow you to keep an archive of all screenshots that you’ve ever captured. This is extremely handy and effective, if not for nostalgia’s sake.
Setup and configuration couldn’t be much more simple.

Here, you’ll definitely want to play with the bottom three options. I highly recommend you change the image type to PNG, as PNGs preserve image quality. JPG is not a very exciting format for a screenshot and will be very fuzzy. You’ll want to set your Snap key to something that is easy to remember and easy to reach for, also. I find myself pressing it quite often.
Afterwards, give it a test. Press your hotkey. You’ll notice the page you’re on will dim. One feature that I really appreciate about ScreenSnapr, versus other similar software, is that it will actually “freeze” your screen on the frame when you press the hotkey to snap your screenshot. It’s a little frustrating when that doesn’t happen, as you have to sort of race to get that perfect screenshot in certain situations.

Hold the left mouse button and select the area that you’d like to screenshot. Then, if you’re using the same options as I am, you should both hear a sound and see a notification in your tray (after a second) that notifies you that your screenshot was uploaded successfully. Then, all that’s left to do is to paste – http://snpr.cm/WHS9eC.png
Speed that process up a little bit and it boils down to being able to take, upload, and share a screenshot in no more than about three seconds flat.

If you’re interested in seeing your image history, just go to the website and click on the History tab across the top. Otherwise, you can right click on your tray icon and hover the Image History menu to roll out your last five screenshots. From there, you can view or copy the URLs. A more effective way to present the screenshots would be with a time-stamped title, in my opinion, as filenames are randomized. It gets the job done nonetheless.

If you decide to become a premium user, you’ll get access to the ScreenSnapr HUB. This is basically a small screenshot editing GUI that offers a few features, like sending straight to Reddit.

You can also configure it so that screenshots are sent to your own server, rather than ScreenSnapr’s. This works well if you’re a little paranoid or like to keep your own things, like I do.
Start using ScreenSnapr today and it’ll be one of those pieces of software in the same class as Dropbox and Evernote. It’s something that has truly made my life a lot easier and I can’t really imagine using the Internet the way I do without it. Let us know if you also enjoy it, in the comments.

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