How to Capture Your Computer Desktop Effectively

When you are writing about technology tutorial, you may need to capture some pictures from your computer desktop as illustrations for readers. Besides, you may need to copy information from a website to help your writing.

The simplest way to capture your screen is press "Print Screen" in the keyboard. Then, you can paste in to Microsoft Word or other program and save it as any file type you want.

Other way, if you need a more professional tool, you can use software to capture your computer desktop. I will introduce you three software. They have their own unique features, which support you in capturing the image and information on your screen.

1. King Kong Capture: it is a freeware. You can download King Kong Capture here for only about 2.75 MB of your system resource. It is compatible with all versions of Windows. King Kong Capture allows you to take onscreen image in seven different ways. The hotkeys of this program is Ctrl + Alt + [Keypad from 1 to 9]. Captured images can be saved as jpg, tif, bmp, gif, png... King Kong Capture also supports print or fax the images. You can paste any image directly to other application.

2. Faststone Screen Capture: this is a powerful tool to capture your onscreen image. However, I also love its flexibility. With Faststone Screen Capture, you can take anything, from full screen to rectangle region. Furthermore, you can also draw freehand region to capture any part of your screen. Faststone Screen Capture supports saving your image as all common image file types include BMP, JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, TGA and PDF. The program also allows you to send your picture to email, Microsoft Word or Microsoft Powerpoint.

Faststone Screen Capture is a shareware. You can download trial version here. The pro version costs about $20.

3. 5 Clicks Simple Screen Capture: similar to King Kong Capture and Faststone Screen Capture, this software allows you to crop your screen directly into JPG, BMP or other common image file types. You can download this software here for only about 700 KB of your system resource.

After installed and activated successfully, "5 Clicks Simple Screen Capture" will appear in your system tray. You have to drag and drop your cursor gracefully in the four yellow arrows of "5 Clicks Simple Screen Capture". Then, in the main windows, click "Copy" to paste the captured image into other applications like Photoshop or Microsoft Words or click "Save" to keep your picture as an image file.

Capturing screen is very useful because it would help you to save your information or picture you want to demonstrate. Whether you need to print screen for your work or just for fun, I hope you can find your method to capture your screen in this article.