If the Windows Snipping Tool does not cover your needs anymore, it’s time to lay eyes on an advanced screenshot app. SmartCapture is one of the professional screen capture programs for Windows that comes with support for different capture modes, multiple monitors, custom hotkeys, image editing functions, and scripts.
You can test the application for 30 days without any limitations and then buy a license for $30.00/€27.30.
Clean design
The GUI is well structured and looks pretty much the same as other layouts adopted by similar screenshot grabbers. The captured image is displayed in the center of the working environment and photo manipulation tools surround the preview area. You may zoom in or out of snapshots and adjust the zoom level (up to 3200%).
A big plus represents the flexibility of the toolbars included in the main layout. You can drag and drop them to the desired position and even extract them from the GUI and place them anywhere on the desktop.
What’s more, you can hide some of the bars, make the primary window remain on top of other utilities, show the program on the taskbar or conceal it, enable a borderless layout, lock the position and size of the bars and main panel, as well as set the transparency.
Support for different capturing modes and profiles
SmartCapture lets you take screenshots in full screen, select a user-defined region of the desktop, or capture a specific window. You may print or export the screenshots to BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, or TIF file format, transfer them into Word, send them via email, open them in another image editor, or send them via Skype.
The best part about this application is that you can create custom profiles which can be used for taking screenshots. You may assign a name to each profile and switch between them with ease.
A profile gives you the flexibility to capture desktop images, open a custom file from your computer, paste data from the Clipboard, import photos from different devices (e.g. scanner, camera), or use the current image.
The captured area can be a rectangle, window, active window, screen, fixed size, or custom area. In addition, you may hide the app’s window, include the mouse cursor, play sound notifications, show the dimension of the captured area, as well as set a time delay before taking snapshots.
Automatic image manipulation actions can be assigned to each profile. You can make the program change the color format (e.g. color depth, dither, invert), geometry (e.g. resize, flip), and colors (e.g. brightness, contrast, gamma), as well as sharpen and soften pictures. You can even fine-tune each image editing parameter in order to make sure the automatic actions are applied correctly.
The captured photo can be displayed in main window or you can make the utility execute one of following actions: save it to a file, copy the photo to the clipboard, print the image, send the file via email, or execute another profile.
There’s also support for a built-in profile manager which can be used for editing or deleting profiles. In addition, you may import/export data from/to SCP file format, and run scripts.
Image editing features
SmartCapture comes with editing tools for helping you enhance snapshots or images imported from your computer. You may crop, adjust the color mode (black & white, grayscale, 16 colors, 256 colors, or true color), opt for an optimized or Windows palette, apply dither or invert effects, highlight only a certain part of a picture, clear the selected picture area and fill it with a custom color, as well as replace colors.
What’s more, you are allowed to alter the brightness, contrast, gamma, saturation, and hue values, sharpen or soften the picture, resize files and adjust the resolution, flip or rotate the file to different angles, as well as undo or redo your actions.
Other important photo editing functions worth being mentioned enable you to draw free-hand designs with the aid of a pen, insert arrows and rectangles, embed custom text (you may change the font, font style, size, and color), and fill in areas with different colors. Plus, you may set the brush diameter in pixels, change the brush color or pick one from the desktop, and alter the background color.
Configuration settings
You can run the utility at Windows startup, automatically adjust the zoom level to display the whole captured photo, set the undo buffer size, assign hotkeys to each profile, configure the size of the monitor, and store clipboard text to a file.
In addition, you can specify the filename, pick the saving directory and preferred output format, as well as set up printing options (e.g. select the orientation, configure page margins, insert header and footer).
The Good
You are given the freedom to create multiple profiles which can be quickly activated for different projects. There’s support for various image editing utilities and annotations tools that can be used for personalizing photos. Plus, you may resize and crop images, as well as print multiple pictures on one page.
The Bad
Not all of SmartCapture’s features can be described as highly intuitive so rookies may need extra time to discover them. You can access a help manual and check out tooltips in case you do not manage to decode the settings on your own. You cannot embed text and image watermarks, and upload images to online platforms like Facebook and Imgur.