Photon

While many useful tools have been included in recent Windows versions, a reliable and intuitive screenshot capture utility is not one of them. There are numerous applications designed to fill this gap, but some are perhaps too complex, and most fail to integrate into the OS and end up looking out of place.

Photon is an unobtrusive and intuitive program that can help you take screenshots and record desktop videos, while also providing you with a basic set of editing tools. Moreover, the application can upload images to various social networks or cloud services.

Once it is launched, Photon is minimized to the system tray, and you just need to click its icon whenever you want to take a screenshot. When doing so, a bounding box is displayed, and you can select the area you want to capture.

It is also possible to record videos of your desktop, and several output formats are supported.

You can press the PrtScn key to take a screenshot or capture a specific window using the ALT + PrtScn combination, but these shortcuts cannot be customized.

After defining the capture area, you can take advantage of the available drawing tools to highlight various items or insert text. These operations are performed on your desktop, without the need for a cumbersome editing application, and you can even modify the capture area afterward.

When you are happy with the results, you can save the image locally, but it is also possible to upload it to the Photon server and provide the generated link to your friends, as well as share the picture via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or VK.

Photon can upload the file to Google’s image search engine to look for similar pictures or use an OCR engine to extract text content.

Overall, Photon is a great choice for anyone looking for a lightweight and easy-to-use application that can help them take screenshots or capture videos. It offers a collection of handy editing tools and allows you to share or upload content, but it could still be improved in a few respects.