A long time ago I wrote about screen capture. That was 10 years ago. I was using SnagIt. I still am. I like the fact it has a PC and a Mac version, and I use them both every single day.
There are times, however, when I’m doing temporary work at a client’s machine and I don’t want to use my personal SnagIt license, so I use the next best thing: Jing (also by TechSmith). It’s free, and it has several of the main features I use all the time in SnagIt.
Jing has a quick access feature that sits at the top of my screen:
I select the window or area I want to capture, perform some basic annotation, and then either put it on the clipboard (usually to paste it on Evernote) or upload it to screencast.com (free service from TechSmith) so I can easily share the image through a link with other people:
That’s it: simple free tool that I use a lot everyday and makes me more productive. Win-win.