Screen capture, or print screen is perhaps the most efficient way to share whatever appears on your desktop. They help tech users like us to share and communicate better with friends and peers. Major operating systems today comes with basic screen capture and print screen function, but if these can’t fulfill what you need from a screen capture then you are probably looking for a screen capturing tool.

Screen capturing tools do what the basic tool don’t. What these tools could do varies, including the ability to include sketches and text, instantly upload image online, audio capturing, dimension-specific capturing and more. Make your screen capture and sharing experience more interesting, here’s a showcase of 40+ Free Screen Capturing Tools and Related Techniques. Full list after jump.

Cross Platform

We love cross platform tools. No more worries when you are all too familiar with one tool and needs to get the job done on a different operating system.

• Jing Project

  A project of Techsmith, Jing has the ability to do instance image and video capturing. Aside from that, you can also do sketches on the image and share them online. Speaking from functionality point of view, being free tool is definetely a steal. [Download: Windows, Mac]

  

• Evernote

  Saying Evernote has cross platform supporting ability seems to be slightly inaccurate, instead it’s multi-platform. This awesome tool not only runs on Windows and Mac, it also supports iPhone, Windows Mobile and even websites. You’ve got to check out the video to see how great it is. [Download: Windows, Mac, more]

  

• WebKut

  Capture web pages in whole or parts. And because it’s developed with Adobe AIR, you bet it’s cross-platform. It captures web screenshots, the only problem is – it’s not attached to the browser. [Download]

  

• Websnapshot

  Yet another Adobe AIR application to take website snap shots. [Downloads]

  

Windows Only

By default, you can only do a full page and active window print screen on Windows. The following tools give you much more flexibility.

• ZScreen

  Open-source screen capture program that allows for region/window/full-screen screenshots. It can FTP screenshots and put the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke. It supports automatic custom naming conventions with variables. [Download]

  

• Screenshot Captor

  Behave like most screen capture software. The most interesting part is – you can run it from a USB thumbdrive. Talking about print screen portability. [Download]

• Cropper

  Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C# on the Microsoft .Net platform. [Download]

• Capture

  Capture is a quick-and-easy screen capture utility for Windows (and NT), which allows you to capture the entire screen, at any color depth and resolution, and save it into a Bitmap file for editing. [Download]

• MWSnap

  Small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen. [Download]

  

• ScreenPrint32

  Free windows tool to print and/or capture to disk or clipboard, the full desktop, active window, predefined area, or user selected area of the screen. [Download]

• Snippy

  Useful free tool to copy webpage screenshot for sharing purposes. Interesting thing is that, when you cutting out a portion of an Internet Explorer window, the URL will also be copied to the clipboard; this makes it very convenient to select something interesting on a Web site and send it out in an email message. [Download]

• SWBCapture

  Screen capture utility that allows you to quickly and easily capture an image of any window on your desktop, or the entire desktop. [Download]

• Screen Grab Pro

  Screen Grab Pro features one-click grab of any screen for ease of use, Timer operation, Current window selection list and more. [Download]

  

• Wisdom-Soft ScreenHunter

  Wisdom-Soft ScreenHunter is a free screen-capture tool for you to easily take screenshots. ScreenHunter can capture a full screen, an active window, the client window, or a rectangular area. [Download]

• Gadwin PrintScreen

  Capture screenshots with ease. [Download]

  

• FastStone Capture

  Light and powerful screen capture application with whole screen, object-selective and region screencapture ability. Save files in various formats, BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF. [Download]

  

Mac Only

Here are some of the most commonly used screen capturing tools for the Mac enthusiast.

• Capture Me

  Flexible screen capture and recording utility for Mac OS X which features a floating capture window, several saving options, and resize ability. [Download]

  

• Backdrop

  Simple utility to fill your screen with a giant blank window. Fill the window with a solid color or a custom image, your choice so you can take clean nice printscreen. [Download]

  

• Skitch

  Skitch is not solely a screen capture tool. It allows you to capture screen shots of any application, chat moments and the ability to sketch on the screen shots. You can then upload it to share with friends. A printscreen tool injected with some fun. [Download]

  

• InstantShot!

  InstantShot! offers classical screenshot functionality for capturing the whole screen, a portion of it or a window and also the option to make timed screenshots or to make delayed captures over time. It offers a wide range of preferences and options to fit everyone’s needs. [Download]

  

• Paparazzi!

  Written in Objective-C and the WebKit framework, this small utility is suitable for those who wants to do simple screen shots in their Mac. [Download]

  

• Screenshot Helper

  Screenshot Helper shows a full screen window with a solid color or a desktop picture so that you can take clean screenshots without having irrelevant windows and desktop icons in the background. [Download]

  

• SnapNDrag

  SnapNDrag lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging the resulting screenshot off, perhaps one of the simplest and easiet to use Mac printscreen tool we’ve seen. [Download]

  

• About Timed Screenshot 1.1

  A light screen capturing tool that runs in background until you kill the process (in Terminal) or logout. [Download]

• Copernicus

  Mac application for speed screenshot taking and video capturing (no audio). It’s also a virtual photo gallery. [Download]

  

Linux

Screen capturing tools for Linux users.

• XscreenCapture

  XscreenCapture allows you to capture an X11 dump from any Linux client with X11 port open. It will also convert and save automatically the result picture in the desidered compress format (default PNG). [Download]

• Xvidcap

  Screen capture enabling you to capture videos off your X-Window desktop for illustration or documentation purposes. [Download]

Web Tools

These web tools go beyond screen capturing of your desktop. It allows you to print screen any website, all the way from header to footer.

• Browsershot

  Free web service that shows you how your website looks like in different browser of different version. A must tool for web developers on a browser compatibility check.

  

• ScreenShots.jp

  Similar to Browsershots, this free web services is for those who understand Japanese.

  

• Super Screenshot

  Simple web service for those who wants quick print screens. No compatibility check of different browser or versions available.

• Clip2Net

  Clip2Net allows you to capture, sketch and share screencaptures online instantly. Good tool to communicate ideas with peers. [Download]

  

• Websnapr

  As the name suggest, it snaps thumbnail screenshot of any webites. All you need to do is enter the URL and hit capture. Comes with plugins you to facilitate blogging and web publishing.

• Thumbalizr

  Yet another online web thumbnail generator. Comes with API.

• Browsrcamp

  Test the compatibility of your design with Mac OS X browsers. Free web screenshot tool build on Mac OSX Leopard.

Firefox Plugins

Screen capturing plugin for Firefox browser. They prints the lower fold screens you don’t see.

• Screengrab!

  Firefox plugin with the ability to printscreen entire upper-fold and lower-fold of any browsing websites. Instead of saving the screenshot to a file, you can copy it to clipboard. [Install]

• FireShot

  Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages. Comes with sets of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Somehow it’s nota available for Firefox on Mac OSX [Install]

  

Further Readings

• Screen Shot Tips & Tricks!

  Five simple things you can do to make your screen shots look better on-screen.

• How to Create a Perfect Screenshot Painlessly

  How to create a screenshot of any web page or capture any screen event. Step by step instructions are given for Photoshop, but you could also use this tutorial with Corel PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro or even MS Paint.

• How To Capture a Screen Shot with the Snipping Tool

  Learn how to make screenshots in Vista with the build-in Snipping Tool.