When Evernote announced last month they were ending support for Skitch on January 22, many users were left scrambling to find a new annotation and screenshot application.
Skitch is an annotation tool, loved by web designers for its ease of use. While Skitch for Mac will still be available for download, it’s not clear from Evernote what kind of support users can expect.
With the news about Skitch, finding a new screen capture tool has been a hot topic in my web design groups for the past month.
The discussions reminded me of my own search 1 1/2 years ago when I turned to Blipshot for capturing screenshots.
I’ve been happy with Blipshot. It’s fast, free, and easy to use.
But after chatting with friends and web colleagues, I did more research and testing. And I’ve settled on a new tool.
My requirements?
I had three. I wanted a tool that:
- Allows me to capture screenshots on my laptop and Chromebook, which meant it needed to work in the browser
- Captures full-page screenshots
- Includes annotation features, with arrows, ability to add text or shapes
Here’s the four tools I liked best, though not all fit my requirements.
1. Blipshot
- Price: Free
- Ease of Use: Easy
- Requirements: Windows, Mac, or Linux
Taking screenshots doesn’t get any easier than with Blipshot, use one-click to take a screenshot of the entire page. You can drag and drop the screenshot or right click to save it as a PNG file.
Blipshot is fast and easy to use. All you need to do is click the browser toolbar icon to make a full-page screenshot.
Note: if it’s a big page, Chrome may crash. I’ve had this happen maybe three times in a year.
I’ve only used it on Chrome; the product description says it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Blipshot was my go-to screen capture tool for over a year. The only thing it lacked was the ability to annotate.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like it, I think Blipshot does a fantastic job of taking screenshots. But I’m tired of taking Blipshot screenshots into another tool to add annotations.
Which is why I turned to the second screenshot tool in this post.
2. Nimbus
- Price: Free
- Ease of Use: Easy
- Requirements: Chrome, Firefox, Android, and Windows
Last fall, I was chatting with my WordPress colleague Andrea Rennick about screenshot tools. She recommended I take a look at Nimbus.
Andrea does a lot of support and often needs to send back screenshots with annotations.
I checked it out and found out all the cool features Nimbus offers. Now I know why Andrea likes it so much. And so do I!
While Blipshot allows you to take full-page screenshots with one click, Nimbus gives you eight screen capture options: the visible part of the page, fragment, selected area, selected & scroll, entire page, browser window, blank screen, and provides the option to record video.
Similar to Blipshot, you select the Nimbus icon in the browser toolbar to take a screenshot. Once you’ve taken the screenshot, you’ll find yourself in the Nimbus editing window where you can add annotations (note the big red arrow I added to this screenshot).
3. Lightshot
- Price: Free
- Ease of Use: Easy
- Requirements: Windows or Mac operating systems, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera
If you work on different platforms and digital devices, but don’t want to learn a different screenshot tool for each, Lightshot may be the tool for you.
With Lightshot, you can easily capture screenshots by selecting an area using the PrntScr key from your keyboard.
Or if you’ve installed it on Chrome, select the Lightshot icon in the browser toolbar to take a screenshot.
Use your cursor to draw out the section of the screen you want to capture. Once you’ve selected the area for screen capture, the annotation tools will display on the right and bottom right area.
You can add lines, arrows, text boxes, or rectangles to draw attention to a specific area on the screenshot.
Two features that Lightshot has that other tools didn’t have:
- Share the image to your social networks
- Lightshot short links
Those are great options when you want to quickly share a screenshot with friends on Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook. Sorry, there’s no Instagram support.
It didn’t take me long to find the save options in Lightshot; they’re displayed at the bottom of the screen. You can save locally or on the Lightshot website, share to social media, or print your file.
The only issue I found with Lightshot: no option to capture the full web page (portions of the page you would only see if you scrolled).
4. qSnap
- Price: Free
- Ease of Use: Easy
- Requirements: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer
qSnap is another screen capture tool with cross-browser support that allows you to save your screenshots locally or in their free hosting service.
Like the other screenshot tools in Chrome, you capture a screenshot with qSnap by selecting the icon in the browser toolbar.
I found the blue, black and white annotation interface aesthetically pleasing to use. It had the familiar arrow, text, blur, and color annotation options. Along with the helpful undo and redo features.
qSnap stood out from the other tools in that it had screenshots in the tray, located at the bottom of the annotation window.
The one thing I didn’t find easily was the save feature. It turns out you need to select the Share button in the bottom right to save or share the screenshot. When I look to save a file, I don’t think of “sharing” it.
One of the reviews for qSnap reported issues with saving screenshots from an https website, but I had no issue saving.
Summary
While Nimbus is my screen capture tool of choice right now, I’m always on the lookout for screen capture tools.
Depending on your requirements, any one of the tools I reviewed are good choices to capture screenshots quickly.
What are some of the tools you use to capture screenshots? Do you use any of the tools I reviewed? I would love to hear what screenshot tools you use.
