Introduction

March 9, 2003

If you only make one screenshot per week or even month, then most likely you are content with the standard windows routine of hitting the "Print Screen" key, opening the "Paint" program, pasting the image, resizing, cropping and saving it. At least that is how I was doing it for a long time until it started to annoy me and I decided to do something about it and created ScreenShot Assistant.
How does this sound: with a single hotkey combination, this program can take a screenshot, resize it, show or hide the mouse pointer, add some text to the image and save it to disk. But there is more than that. Let's take a look at the program features in detail:

  • Macros
    The program contains a set of macros with customizable hotkeys, each designed to take a specific screenshot style. Not satisfied with the supplied macros? Modify them or create new ones.
  • Screenshot types
    Users can take screenshots of the
    • entire screen
    • rectangular segment of the screen
    • currently active window or
    • another not-necessarily-active window
  • Hotkeys
    Each macro has its own customizable hotkey.
  • Saving images
    ScreenShot Assistant can automatically save the screenshot using the pre-selected file name. It can use auto-enumeration to append auto-incremented numbers to the end of the file name. Or, it can ask for the file name after the screenshot is taken.
  • Image formats
    Program can save images as bitmaps (16 colors, 256 colors, 16-bit or 24-bit), jpeg (8-bit gray scale or true color 24-bit) or GIFs (from monochrome to 8-bit quality) including animated GIFs.
  • GIF animations
    Instead of taking just one screenshot, program can record a GIF animation! Users can either specify frame rate and start/stop the macro to start/stop recording, or choose "step-animation" and record each frame separately with a specified time delay between the frames.
  • Optional mouse cursor
    The mouse cursor can be visible on the screenshots. If visible, the cursor image can be the original one or a custom one loaded user-specified file.
  • Screenshot comments/notes
    Users can place annotations on the screenshots, with several options on text placement and customizable font.
  • Resizing
    Screenshot images can be resized (manually or automatically) to a desired percentage of the original, or to a fixed height or width.
  • Other options
    Program hotkeys for the stopping of recording of an animation, selecting a source screen rectangle and selecting the screenshot source window can be customized. Users can choose sound (WAV) files to be played when a screenshot is taken, and when animation recording is finished.