Filed under Desktop | by Samuel Huckins | Date Posted: November 22, 2008 - 9:56 PM

One new tool I have come across in my foray into Windows Vista that I have found quite helpful is The Snipping Tool. The average Vista user I talk to has never come across this utility and, as mentioned here, it is annoyingly packaged with the Tablet-PC Optional Components, so you might remove it and never know. All this aside, it is definitely worth a try. If you ever perform the Print Screen/take entire window screenshot -> open file in editor -> crop/mark up before using an image pattern, then this tool is for you. Unless you remove it, it can be found in Accessories in the Start Menu.

I found it most handy to bind it to a keyboard shortcut, say ctrl + alt + s. You can assign a shortcut to any application by right clicking it in the Start Menu, selecting properties, select the shortcut tab, click the Shortcut key box, and press the combo you want to use. Then when you need to capture an image, just hit that combo, and your screen will turn slightly white, a window with controls will appear, and your cursor will change. Now you just drag select the area you want to capture, and the image comes up in a handy editor. It’s no Photoshop, but it covers what you will likely need. You can crop, mark things up with various colored lines, and a few other things, aside from Save and Print. This makes it very easy to grab a section of your screen, mark it up with an arrow or something similar, and include it in an email, webpage, etc. A very easily generated one thousand words.

Not to be left in the dark while on my Linux desktop, I went looking for similar apps. I quickly found GScrot. It covers the features of The Snipping Tool and a lot more. Once you bring it up, you can select to take a screenshot of a selected area, a fullscreen shot, a particular window, part of a window, or a webpage with one or two clicks. It handily keeps track of all the images you have taken per session, which is great if you are doing a series of similar ones. You can print, save, copy, etc, and send it right to a defined hosting site in one click! It also has a small editor brought up by hitting the Draw icon after an image is taken that lets you quickly add line markups.

In short: The Snipping Tool is a useful small app for Vista use, and does a commonly needed task well (and definitely better than PrintScrn). Meanwhile the Linux version does more, and does it better, and does it for free