We first reviewed this product 13 years ago and we still use it every single day.
FastStone Capture is a fast, lightweight screen capture tool that lets us quickly grab anything onscreen.
It’s not exactly what anyone might term a ‘sexy’ app, but we’ve been using it for years on end without complaint, so we figured to was time to once again give credit where it’s due, and rightly sing the praises of this workhouse performer.
Easy access
Accessed via a small capture panel that can be set to conveniently lurk wherever you put it, the app lets you grab windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular and freehand regions – and if want to bag a page that stretches beyond the screen, it can automatically scroll to the bottom.
Captured images can be sent to a small built in editor, saved to the clipboard, printed, emailed or imported into a Word/PowerPoint document or FTP’s to your webspace.
Built in editor
The built in basic editing tools let you scribble notes, add captions, boxes, shapes or arrowed lines, and images can be resized, cropped, sharpened or have a watermark added (the only thing else we’d really like is built in support for the ‘reflection’ effect for screen grabs).
External editors
If you need more editing power, you can also specify an external editor from within the app, while other features include global hotkeys, automatic filename generation, a colour picker, a screen magnifier and a screen ruler.
It’s also possible to record screen activities and sound into video files.
Wrapping up the feature set, FastStone Capture can usefully save/export files in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF formats and it’s an app we can’t recommend enough.
Full list of features
- A handy Capture Panel that provides quick access to its capture tools and output options
- Capture windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand/fixed-size regions and scrolling windows/web pages
- Capture multiple windows and objects including multi-level menus
- Record screen activities including onscreen changes, speech from microphone, audio from speakers, webcam, mouse movements and clicks into highly compressed video files (MP4 and WMV)
- Schedule recordings using a timer
- Screen Recorder has a built-in video editor that allows you to draw annotations, apply zoom effects and cut unwanted sections. Videos can be converted to animated GIF
- Screen Recorder provides a “Convert to MP4” tool that converts or resizes video files (MP4 and WMV) under various resolution and quality options
- Options to specify output destination (internal editor, clipboard, file, printer …)
- Draw annotation objects such as callouts, straight/curved text, arrowed lines, highlights, watermarks, rectangles, circles, step numbers, emojis and much more
- Apply effects such as spotlight, drop-shadow, frame, torn-edge and fade-edge
- Blur selected area
- Add image caption
- Resize, crop, rotate, sharpen, brighten, adjust colors
- Undo/Redo
- Support tabs that allow you to capture and edit multiple screenshots simultaneously
- Organize and group tabs in multiple workspaces (optional). Each workspace remembers its last-used folder and works like a separate instance of the internal editor
- Support external editors
- Save images in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF, WEBP and PDF formats
- Save images in FSC (FastStone Capture) format, a proprietary and loss-less format that preserves annotation objects together with image data for future re-editing
- Save videos in MP4 and WMV formats
- Acquire images from scanner
- Convert images into a single PDF file
- Combine images into a single image file
- Print multiple images in batch mode
- Send captured images by email
- Send captured images to OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
- Send captured images to a Web (FTP) server
- Auto capture screen repeatedly at user-specified time intervals
- Screen Color Picker
- Screen Magnifier
- Screen Crosshair
- Screen Focus
- Screen Ruler
- Support multiple monitors
- Support high-DPI/high-resolution/4K monitors
- Support touch interface (tap, swipe, pinch)
- Global hotkeys to activate screen capturing instantly
- Run when Windows starts (optional)
- Minimize to notification area
- Small footprint in memory
- And much more …
Download a copy
FastStone Capture 10.4 is $19.95 from the official website or the last – and excellent – freeware version v5.3 can be downloaded from here.
