Lightshot – Create screenshots, share via print.sc cloud

Sjoerd Koolen, Productivity Adoption Consultant at Microsoft, demo-ed Lightshot to me and he uploaded a screenshot to the Lightshot prnt.sc (printscreen) servers and got its short link right away for easy sharing.

Personally I have been using WinSnap from NTWind Software for the past couple of years, because it provided me with more helpful features (and efficiency) than the default Windows Snipping Tool. I’ll do a quick comparison of Lightshot, WinSnap and the Windows Snipping Tool as well.

Lightshot – a customizable screenshot tool

LightShot is available for free on multiple operating platforms: Windows, MacOS and Ubuntu. There are also LightShot extensions for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Taking a screenshot with LightShot

Taking a screenshot can be via the hot key combination that you’ve set. Or simply by right clicking on the LightShot icon in the taskbar notification area and selecting the option take screenshot.

You will see a grey overlay and a via a rectangular you can select the are you would like to take a screenshot of. The horizontal application bar and the vertical application bar come together in the bottom right corner of the rectangular.

Let’s have a quick look at an overview of the commands available from these two menu bars.

Vertical application bar

The following annotation options for the screenshot are available from the vertical application bar.

• Pen;
• Line;
• Arrow;
• Rectangle;
• Marker;
• Color selection;
• Undo;

Horizontal application bar

• Upload to prntscr.com
• Share on social networks;
• Search on Google for similar pictures;
• Print screenshot;
• Copy screenshot;
• Close LightShot;

The horizontal application bar is focused around saving, uploading and sharing options for the screenshot.

LightShot Options and more

In the options menu of the application you can set some uploading preferences, you can adjust the hot key combinations, and set the default picture format and saving quality. Finally you can set proxy settings when needed.

LightShot comparison – WinSnap or Snipping Tool

NTWind Software WinSnap

LightShot and WinSnap offer better features to make annotations directly to the screenshot (arrows, rectangular markings, text, etc.). In WinSnap I use the copy image function a lot, to directly copy the screenshot into an e-mail.

Furthermore WinSnap provides a delayed snap feature, as well as shadow and auto saving settings so you can select the file format, file location and the type of shadow you would like to use.  Personally I like the multiple object selection feature to select multiple menu objects or multiple windows by simply pressing the CRTL-key and selecting them.

There is no direct upload to the cloud from within WinSnap, but you could set OneDrive or Flickr as the default saving location.

WinSnap is not free and will cost $30,- for a lifetime license.

Windows Snipping Tool

The default Windows Snipping Tool is a good tool to create screenshots, however compared to LightShot and WinSnap it is lacking a few helpful features.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

LightShot is a highly functional and feature rich and free application to take screenshots and share them in a simple way. It is available for multiple operating systems and as a browser extension for multiple web-browsers.

The direct upload- and sharing mechanism from prnt.scr cloud service can be a very useful feature, however you can only login with a Facebook- or Google account. So I submitted a uservoice feedback request to support other login options (and with me more people requested this).

I’m curious, what application do you use to take screenshots ?