You can create a screenshot either by using the Print key on your keyboard
or by right clicking the Greenshot icon in the systray.
There are several options for creating a screenshot:
The region capture mode allows you to select a part of you screen to be shot.
After starting region mode, you will see a crosshair pointing out the mouse
position on the screen. Click and hold where you want one of the corners of your
screenshot to be. Still holding down the mouse button, drag the mouse to define
the rectangle to be shot. When the green rectangle covers the area you want to
be captured in your screenshot, release the mouse button.
You can use the Space key to switch between region and window mode.
If you want to capture an exact area, it might be easier to select the initial screenshot area slightly larger and to crop the screenshot afterwards using Greenshot's image editor.
If you did a region or window capture before, you can capture the same region again using this option.
Creates a screenshot of the window which is currently active.
For Windows 7 or Vista systems, use the Window Capture mode setting to control how Greenshot handles semi transparent (Aero) window borders, e.g. replacing transparency with a custom color.
The settings dialog offers an option not to capture
the active window right away, but allowing you to select one interactively.
If this option is selected, you may select a window by clicking it (As in
region mode, Greenshot will highlight the area
that will be captured).
If you want a child window to be captured (e.g. a browser
viewport (without toolsbars etc.) or a single frame of a web page using framesets)
point the mouse cursor to the window and hit the PgDown key. After
doing so, you can select child elements of the window to be captured.
Capturing context menus on their own is different: using the "Capture window" shortcut would make the context menu disappear, and obviously the same would happen if you used Greenshot's context menu in order to create the screenshot. If you want to capture a context menu you have just brought up by right-clicking anything, simply activate region mode Print, then press the Space key.
Creates a screenshot of the complete screen.
Comfortably creates a screenshot of a web page currently opened in Internet Explorer. Use Greenshot's context menu to select the Internet Explorer tab to capture, or hit Crtl + Shift + Print to capture the active tab.
Greenshot comes with an easy-to-use image editor, providing a handy featureset to add annotations or shapes to a screenshot. It even allows to highlight or obfuscate parts of your screenshot.
Greenshot's image editor may not only be used for screenshots. You can also open images for editing from a file or from clipboard. Simply right click the Greenshot icon in the systray and select Open image from file or Open image from clipboard, respectively.
By default, the image editor will be opened whenever a screenshot is captured. If you do not want to use the image editor, you can disable this behavior in the settings dialog.
Select one of the shape drawing tools from the toolbar on the left hand side
of the image editor or from the Object menu. There is also a key assigned
to each tool for your convenience.
Available shapes are: rectangle R, ellipse E, line L,
arrow A and freehand line F.
Click, hold down the mouse button and drag to define position and size of the shape.
Release the mouse button when you are done.
You can move or resize existing shapes after selecting the selection tool
ESC from the toolbar.
For every element type there is a specific
set of options available to change the look of the element (e.g. line thickness,
line color, fill color). You can change the options for an existing element after
selecting it, but also for the next element to be drawn after selecting a drawing tool.
You can select multiple elements for editing at a time. In order to select multiple elements, hold down the Shift key while clicking the elements.
If you want to draw equilateral shapes (e.g. force a rectangle to be a square) hold
down Shift while drawing. When drawing lines or arrows, holding down Shift
results in the line's angle being rounded in steps 15°.
You can also use Shift if you want to resize an existing object maintaining it's aspect ratio.
When drawing or scaling, you can hold down Ctrl to have the object anchored in it's geometrical middle. I.e. the object is resized in the opposite direction, too. (This is very handy if you want to draw an ellipse around something on your screenshot.)
Usage of the text tool T is similar to the usage of the
shape tools. Just draw the text element to the desired
size, then type in the text.
Double click an existing text element to edit the text.
Hit Return or Enter when you have finished editing.
If you need to insert line breaks within a text box, hit Shift + Return or Shift + Enter.
After selecting the highlight tool H, you can define the area to be
highlighted exactly like you would draw a shape.
There are several options for highlighting, which you can choose from by clicking
the leftmost button in the toolbar on top:
Obfuscating parts of a screenshot is a good idea if it contains data which is not
intended for other people to see, e.g. bank account data, names, passwords or faces on images.
Use the obfuscate tool O exactly like the highlight
tool.
Available options for obfuscation are:
* Depeding on the performance of your computer, applying a blur effect might slow down
Greenshot's image editor. If you feel the image editor reacting slowly as soon as a
blur is applied, try reducing the value for Preview quality in the toolbar or
decrease the value for Blur radius.
If the blur performance is still too bad for you to work with, you might prefer
to use the pixelize effect instead.
You can add different effects to your screenshot. You might want to apply a border, shadow or torn edges effect, e.g. to visually separate your screenshot from other content in a document. The Grayscale and Invert effects are mainly useful before printing, saving ink or toner when printing colorful or dark screenshots.
If you only need a part of the screenshot you have captured, use the crop tool C
to crop it to the desired area.
After selecting the crop tool, draw a rectangle for the area of the screenshot you want
to keep. You can resize the selected area like any other element.
When you are content with your selection, use the confirm button in the toolbar or hit
the Enter key. You can cancel cropping by clicking the cancel button or hitting
ESC.
Auto-Crop: If you need to crop a border of solid background color from your screenshot, simply choose Auto-Crop from the Edit menu and Greenshot will automatically select the area for cropping.
Use the rotation tools to rotate the screenshot clockwise or anti-clockwise.
You can simply add graphics or images to your screenshot by dragging and dropping an image file into the editor window. You can also insert screenshots of other windows by selecting Insert window from the Edit menu. A list of all open windows appears, allowing you to select one for insertion.
If you find yourself using the same or similar elements on most of your screenshots
(e.g. a textfield containing browser type and version, or obfuscating the same
element on several screenshots) you can re-use elements.
Select Save objects to file from the Object menu to save the current
set of elements for re-using it later. Load objects from file applies the
same elements to another screenshot.
After editing the screenshot, you can export the result for different purposes, depending on your needs. You can access all export options through the File menu, the topmost toolbar or via shortcuts:
There are plugins for exporting screenshots to other targets, e.g. DropBox, Picasa, Flickr. Simply select the appropriate plugins during the installation process.
After saving an image from the editor, right-click the status bar at the bottom of the editor window to either copy the file path into the clipboard or open the containing directory in Windows Explorer.
By default, Greenshot lets you pick a destination dynamically after creating a screenshot, displaying a small
menu with different destinations to select from. If you do not want or need to switch destinations instantly,
you might prefer to configure Greenshot to export to one or more destinations directly, without displaying the
destination picker.
Note: as with exporting from the editor window, the displayed destinations vary
depending on the plugins that you have installed with Greenshot.
Displays a list of installed Greenshot plugins. Select one from the list and click Configure in order to access the configuration of a plugin.
We mean it: you rather should not change anything here if you do not know what you are doing, as these settings might lead to unexpected behavior.
Currently, we do not need help in development. However, there are several things you
can do to support Greenshot and the development team.
Thanks in advance :)
We are putting a lot of work into Greenshot and spending quite some time to provide
a good piece of software for free and open source. If you feel
that it makes you more productive, if it saves you (or your company)
a lot of time and money, or if you simply like Greenshot and
the idea of open source software: please consider honoring our effort by donating.
Please have a look at our home page to see how you can support the Greenshot development team:
http://getgreenshot.org/support/
If you like Greenshot, let the people know: tell your friends and colleagues about Greenshot.
Your followers, too :)
Rate Greenshot in software portals or link to our home page from your blog or website.
Greenshot is not available in your preferred language? If you feel fit for translating
a piece of software, you are more than welcome.
If you are a registered user at sourceforge.net, you can submit translations to our
translations tracker.
Please make sure there is no existing translation for your language on our
downloads page. Also check our translations tracker,
there might be a translation in progress, or at least in discussion.
Please note that we will only provide a translation on our downloads page if it has
been submitted through your sourceforge.net user account. Since we most probably are
not capable to understand your translation, it is good for other sourceforge users
to be able to contact you about improvements or enhancements in case of a new Greenshot
version.