Do you want to know how to easily take screenshots in Windows?
I have found that taking screenshots can be cumbersome and annoying.
Windows 7 and 8 come with a snipping tool which makes it pretty simple to take a screenshot of your screen, but if you want to share that screenshot with someone or upload it to facebook or to a Blog, the process requires multiple steps such as:
- Load Windows Snipping Tool
- Hit a hot-key button to activate screen capture mode
- Select the area you want to capture on your screen
- Windows Snipping Tool takes the screenshot
- Save the file to your computer, giving it a name you’ll remember
- Find the file on your computer and share it with someone, or upload to Facebook, or to your Blog
As you can see, there are 6 steps involved here.
It’s not that difficult, but it’s not a very efficient way of doing things if you take screenshots quite often.
Want to know a much better way of doing it?
Use ShareX
My friend, Tyler Cruz, shared with me that he uses this tool called ShareX for his screenshots.
It’s a neat little tool that you can download for free, which shortens the process of taking a screenshot considerably.
The reason it’s more efficient is because it automates a few key steps.
#1 – Auto-load on Windows Startup
You can setup the tool to automatically load up when you load Windows.
This means you don’t have to remember to load up the Windows Snipping tool each time.
ShareX simply maps itself to a hot-key you preset and then it just works.
The default setting that I use is the hot-key CTRL + Print Screen.
So any time I want to take a screenshot of anything, I just hit CTRL + Print Screen and ShareX pops up and gives me a selection tool to select which area of my screen I want to take a screenshot of.
#2 – Setup Automatic Uploading of Your Screenshot File
Once the software takes a screenshot of an area of your screen, you can set it up to automatically upload your file to an FTP server or any type of cloud service like Dropbox or Flickr or Photobucket or whatever you want to use to store your uploaded images.
I just set up mine to automatically upload the file to my FTP server so that I don’t have to waste any time uploading manually.
Also, I have my FTP server directory setup so that it puts all my files into a sub-folder on my Blog, so this way all my screenshots are also visible to anyone I want to share them with just by giving them the URL to the file.
#3 – Setup Automatic Copying of File URL to Clipboard
Once the software takes the screenshot, and uploads it to your FTP server or file sharing site, it can automatically copy the URL to the image directly to your clipboard.
This way, a few seconds after you take your screenshot the URL to the image is loaded up in your clipboard and you can then PASTE it into any window.
For example if I’m chatting with someone on SKYPE, and I want to show them something really quickly, I’ll just take a screenshot by hitting CTRL + Print Screen and then selecting an area on my screen and then as soon as I do that, the software uploads the file and copies the URL to my clipboard.
Then I just go to my chat window and hit CTRL + V (hot key for PASTE) and boom the software puts the URL to the file in the chat.
This way the person can click on the link in the chat window and see the screenshot.
Or if I want to upload something to Facebook, I’ll take a screenshot and 3 seconds later the file is uploaded to my FTP server and the URL is ready to be pasted.
Then I click Upload in Facebook and when it asks me for the location of the file – instead of spending time looking for the file on my computer’s hard drive I just PASTE the URL into the input box which asks me where I want to upload my file from.
This way Facebook actually pulls the file from my FTP server and uploads it to Facebook.
There are many other features that this software has, but even with just these three simple settings, I’ve shortened my screen capturing process from six steps to just three:
- Hit a hot-key button to activate screen capture mode
- Select the area you wan to capture on your screen
- File is uploaded and the URL to it is copied to my clipboard, ready to be shared
Where to Get ShareX for Free
You can download ShareX for Windows for free by clicking here or on the picture below:
