As a tutorial writer, screen capture is something I can't live without. My personal preference is for the pay product SnagIt, which includes extensive annotations tools not available in free screen capture apps. That doesn't mean there aren't great features in some of the free screen capture solutions. If you're willing to sacrifice convenience or use multiple free apps to handle all the potential aspects of screen capture, any of the free tools can work nicely.
Reader's Choice: ScreenHunter ranked at the top of the reader survey with 17% of readers selecting it as their favorite. The application provides basic enhancements over simply using the Print Screen key, offering configurable hot keys, automatic file naming, and configurable screen capture area.
2) Print Screen, the handy button on the top row of most keyboards, placed second in reader voting with 9%. While hitting the print screen key is free and certainly rules out the need for installing additional software, there are limitations (like not being able to pick a window to capture) that create more work than installing a utility.
3) CamStudio received a mere 4 fewer reader votes than using the Print Screen key, giving it just about 9% of reader votes as well. CamStudio is by far the best free tool for recording screencasts, although it requires additional tools to edit them.
4) Gadwin PrintScreen is by far the most elegant free screen capture utility, placing fourth with 8% of reader votes. Built-in features like easy emailing of screen capture windows and the ability to output several more image formats than other apps in this bunch. I'd be inclined to suggest an upgrade to the not free Pro version, simply because it lets you do callouts and other useful annotations on your screen captures.
5) FastStone Screen Capture offers the most features of the screen capture apps in this bunch and received another 8% of reader votes. With a full-fledged image editor built in, FastStone Screen Capture could easily edit your photos when you're not grabbing screens.
An additional 130 screen capture solutions were suggested by readers participating in the survey.
