Snipaste

Snipaste provides you with the basic functionality you would expect to find in any screenshot utility, but it comes with some unique features as well. Besides taking snapshots of the screen on the fly, you can also pin your screenshots directly on your desktop, which can make things much easier for designers or other professionals. The application has a straightforward functionality and mastering its controls shouldn't be a challenge, even for novice users.

Snipaste's components are distributed in a ZIP archive, so you only need to extract them and run the executable, instead of going through an installation process. However, the application requires MS Visual C++ 2005, which you have to download and install yourself, otherwise you will encounter an error at launch. The software is compatible with all modern Windows platforms and it is offered completely free of charge.

The application works quietly in the background and you can use its screen capturing features through hotkeys. You can press F1 and select an area you wish to capture. Once the area is selected, you can insert various annotations and save the image in JPEG, PNG or BMP. Alternatively, you can decide to copy the snapshot to the clipboard, instead of saving it, which gives you more possibilities.

Once a snapshot is saved in the clipboard, you can hit the F3 key to pin it directly to your desktop as a snippet. It is possible to pin multiple snippets, drag them around on your desktop, enlarge them or shrink them. What's more, the application lets you organize your snippets in different groups. As a result, you can switch between different sets of snapshots, instead of having a desktop full of pinned images.

The software's online documentation includes a lot of useful information, about various features which are easy to overlook. A color picker, theme customization or automatic backup and restore capabilities are just a few examples.

A significant increase in productivity is exactly what you can expect from Snipaste.