Great Free Software – Gadwin Print Screen

Do you ever wish the “PrtSc” (print screen) button would do what you want – eg

• Print the whole contents of the screen to the printer
• Print a part of the screen to the printer
• Save part or all of the screen to an image file that you can use and refer to later

Gadwin PrintScreen does all of this. Amongst the options are:

• Capturing the screen, the active window, or a user-defined rectangle
• Sending the captured image to any or all of the clipboard, printer, email, or file
• Choosing the file format of a captured image (gif, jpg, bmp, tif, png)

Set your options to begin with and then just use it. You don’t have to plough through the options each time you use it – just press PrtSc (or a different key combination if that’s what you’ve chosen to do). If you set it to load up when Windows starts, it’s always there – at a single keystroke.

A lot of the images in my blog are captured with Gadwin. It’s also excellent for capturing web pages as the results are exactly the same as you see on screen, whereas printing web pages can often lead to unpredictable results and pages and pages of guff spilling out of the printer.

It’s very handy for keeping a record of on-screen forms that you’ve just completed. I have a special folder that only contains “screen captures”. Gadwin is set to always save to that folder so I always know where I saved an image that I may want later. Periodically, I clear the folder of images I’m not likely to need again.

I have been using it for a year or two now and I just take it for granted. There is also a paid-for version (PrintScreen Professional – $21.95) that includes an image editor and annotation facility but I’ve never needed this.

Gadwin PrintScreen is free and is available for download at http://www.gadwin.com/download/. It works with all versions of Windows.

… and, yes, I did capture the image above from Gadwin’s website using the program..