Take A Snap

There are various situations in which a picture taken at the right time can turn everything around. In testing, screenshots come as powerful resources to better develop applications. Every keyboard is fitted with a print screen button, but there are also specialized applications like Take A Snap you can use to enhance this function.

The application starts automatically right after setup, but you don’t see a splash screen, window, or tray icon. It runs as a process, so closing it needs to be done from the Task Manager. However, it doesn’t put a strain on performance, and it’s even configured to start alongside Windows, so that it’s ready when you reach the desktop.

Sadly, there are no instructions to get you up and running from the start, but the readme file does contain useful info on how the application works. In fact, it isn’t even difficult to figure it out on your own, and you notice that hitting the print screen button on your keyboard immediately brings up a prompt with the screenshot preview.

Unlike the default Windows screenshot method where you need to grab the image from the clipboard, this one shows a dialog which lets you save the picture directly. Unfortunately, it can’t be configured to remember your settings and have pictures automatically saved to a custom location.

There’s only one mode of operation, namely to grab activity on the entire screen. What’s more, saving is only possible under the JPG format. The application lacks any kind of post-processing options, and doesn’t really do more than to add a save dialog to the print screen function.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that Take A Snap is nothing more and nothing less than a straightforward extension to a function you find by default in Windows. Practicality has a lot to suffer because of the lack of options to crop, or at least save under more formats.