How to take a screenshot using ShareX

[Outlook]

I have used many screenshot software over the year and Snagit certainly is at the top of my recommendation list however it is paid for software and not cheap at all.

 

Thus I began my search to find a free alternative, but still rich in features since the built in windows print screen function is quite limited.

 

I came accross the ShareX Screen capture, file sharing and productivity tool! Absolutely incredible, but there is a few things to just configure before hand which I will dive into.

 

Goal: Our goal is to press "Print Screen" and then have a selection tool pop up that allows us to drag and select an area to capture, then that capture should be either stored on the computer or saved online, or both.

 

How do we get this to work?

 

First install ShareX - Download here

 

Once installed ShareX will show up in your taskbar area:

 

 

So now we want to access the settings and in order to do so right click on ShareX:

 

 

Now click on hotkey settings then the following pop up will open:

 

 

Now on first install Print Screen (Second row) will not be set to Capture region, simply click on it and change it so that it looks like the screenshot above.

 

That is it you are done. Here is the cool part, when you press Print Screen ShareX it saved the file on your local machine and automatically uploads the image to imgur.com and gives you an URL that you can use to upload the image here on the forum.

 

See below - If you click on that url it will open up your image on imgur.com:

 

 

On the forum you can now click on the Picture Icon in the editor and simply paste the imgur.com link and the image will be inserted into your forum post. 

 

This helps lower the strain on the forum since the images are then hosted on imgur and not the forum directly, although I asked @PlatinumWealth and he said:

 

Imgur and hosted images in general are always welcome, because it does help by not having us to store the data. However, you do not have to be concerned about this we are hosted on domains.co.za and it will take some years before the server even notice the uploads. As soon as we touch 20Gb of image/attachment uploads I will configure the back-end in such a manner that the images attachment folders are stored on and AWS instance remotely.

 

So there we have it although imgur will be lighter on the server that is not the reason to use it, I use it because it is a lot faster if I have a bunch of images already that I can simply insert into the post without having to upload each one individually by the Attachments feature of the forum.

 

What sets ShareX apart for me is the following features (Also it is Open Source)