LightShot 5.5

LightShot captures any area of your screen in just a few mouse clicks. Both the area to be captured and the screenshot itself are fully customizable, allowing you to add text boxes, rectangles, arrows, lines, and other clipart objects to your capture “before” saving it to disk. The resulting image can then be stored as either a JPEG or a PNG image file.

The fact that only these two image file types are supported for the output is probably the only serious drawback that you will find when using LightShot. However, the fact that you can somehow edit and enhance the captured area before saving it to disk does make up for the short list of image formats supported. I find that a very useful – and rare – feature when taking screenshots of your desktop. Let’s face it – why would you need to make a capture of your screen or a section of it if not to save or point out to someone else some important elements that can only be seen on a computer screen? There is where all these useful clipart and highlighting tools that come with LightShot come into play.

Typically, you will save your screenshot to disk and will open your favorite photo or image editor to import it, highlight the relevant information, and save it again as a new image file. LightShot makes the last two steps redundant. Once you have selected the area you wish to capture, you can start adding whatever text you want to add, or use arrows to point at the relevant items in the screenshot, lines to underline text, squares and rectangles to frame the juicy bit, or the yellow marker pen to state clearly which part of the information you want to highlight. Before saving the resulting image as a PNG or a JPEG file, you can still perform as many changes as required on your screenshot – expand or reduce the selected area, remove any of the elements you just added, or add new ones. You will not need to turn your selection into a file until you are happy with the results.

LightShot makes the entire capture process simple and rewarding. You can capture and edit your screenshot in one single operation, and that is a major advantage, especially if you need to capture a large number of screens. Besides, this is a free tool. Therefore, I can’t see any reason why anyone would refuse to download it and have it installed on his or her system other than they already have it.