14 DAY TRIAL // What do you do when you want to take screenshots of your monitor? Some of you are using MS Paint. And if you want to take a screenshot of a little part of your screen? How do you crop that part? There are lots of answers to these questions, but in most cases one would have to use two stand alone programs to achieve that result.
Sometimes you just want to put a frame to that picture and again, you will be forced into using a different program designed to cover that area. I say you stop looking for complicated softwares to take screenshots and frame them. Most of them are not free and you may even be disappointed by the end result.
RumShot is a software to be taken with patience and it is free. The program is developed by Andrew Powell and it is designed to create framed previews of the screenshots you take. The zipped kit of the software is no more than 221KB large. The application does not require to be installed and a simple double click on the executable file will launch the program.
The additional files you can download together with the software include a pack of 68 themes that you can set as frames for the previews. The interface of the software is not much, but it is enough for what you need. The software's application window is ergonomically conceived as the settings of the program can be activated at any time by extending the main application window.
If you think that the entire interface is just too much and fiddles with your work, you can strip it and remain with only the frame. Thus you can see exactly the enframing and make the necessary adjustments.
The settings of the application are few, but you do not need more than the program provides. The user can set the quality of the pictures taken and to show solid preview background, which is also configurable and you get to choose your color from a color palette. The colors can be adjusted by hue, saturation and lightness.
I forgot to mention that the program will save two sets of pictures for each screenshot you take: the screenshot itself and the preview. These images can be saved in different formats each (.png, .jpg, .gif, and .bmp). Both images will have the name given by you, but the preview image will be added "preview" mark in order to make the difference between them.
The Settings window contains the option of directly uploading the images to a FTP server and you just need to complete the Username, Password, Address, Port and Target Directory fields.
As I had some problems with adding the downloaded themes, I feel obliged to share the method, because there is no "Add Themes" in the interface. The method is pretty simple. Once you have launched the software, in My Documents folder of the current user there will be created two folders: Rumshot Screenshots and Rumshot Themes. All you have to do is copy the downloaded Rumshot themes into the Themes folder. At restarting the software, you will notice the themes loading window and in the right side of the software there will appear all the loaded frames.
The frames vary from simple ones to more complicated, like Cinema Display or Negatives and Ozzpot's Celluloid. A big surprise was when I found out that I can create my own frames. I accidentally unzipped one of the .rumshot files (themes) and I saw that it contained two .png files and an .xml one. Suffice to tamper with the code in the XML and you have a new theme that fits your taste.
The Good
The software is super easy to use and it is free. It will fulfill your screenshot necessities in a snap. The Help menu will explain in detail all the aspects of the application.
The FTP feature is useful in many cases, as you can upload the files directly to the server and the user can set the quality of the JPEG file on a scale from 1 to 10.
The Bad
The software is unable to take screenshots for the applications I have active. The final result is the same as if using the print screen function in Windows.
The Truth
Apart from that minor baddie - which I am sure that is due to its youth - the application is just great.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
