Is Faststone Capture Free

[Fisseha Aranda]

Thedownload has been tested by an editor here on a PC and a list of features has been compiled; see below. We've also created some screenshots of FastStone Capture to illustrate the user interface and show the overall usage and features of this screen capture program.

FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool and screen video recorder. It allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular / freehand / fixed regions as well as scrolling windows / web pages.FastStone Capture also allows you to record all screen activities including onscreen changes, speech from microphone, mouse movements and clicks into highly compressed video files. You can choose to send captures to editor, file, clipboard, printer, email, Word / PowerPoint document or upload them to your website. Editing tools include annotating (texts, arrowed lines, highlights), resizing, cropping, sharpening, watermarking, applying edge effects and many more.Other features include image scanning, global hotkeys, automatic filename generation, support for external editors, a color picker, a screen magnifier, a screen crosshair and a screen ruler. FastStone Capture saves images in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF formats. Built-in screen recorder saves videos in WMV (Windows Media Video) format.

FastStone Capture is screen capture program that I've been using for 15 years. It only costs #20 for a lifetime license and I highly recommend it. Like dozens of other screen capture programs, it originally just captured the pixels on the screen but what made it so useful is it did it totally automatically at the touch of a key. If captures windows, objects, rectangular or freehand areas, and will even scroll a webpage and capture it as it scrolls. It gives you a dozen options of what to do with it after capture. I normally just automatically save it to a file (whose name I specify with a template) in a folder I specify. However, a great feature is you can also save to the draw board where you can do a quick annotation before sending to a friend, or whatever. This draw board is the same tool found in FastStone MaxView and Image Viewer.

For over 10 years FS Capture has also been able to capture video appearing on the screen. This means you can capture streaming video you can't save any other way. I also use this feature to capture something I'm doing on the screen that I want to share with others. With the video it can also capture what you hear on the speakers and/or what you say into a microphone. It can also optionally highlight the mouse location and even capture the click of the mouse.

After installing FS Capture I almost always make these setting changes, to make Capture behave the way I like. You can get to settings with the F12 shortcut key, or by clicking on the right-most icon and choosing Settings:

You'll notice there are nine tabs at the top of Settings, I also recommend making change on the File Name an Auto Save tab if you use Capture for standard screen captures in addition to capturing video.

On the File Name tab, you can either just type in the template (Capture remembers the last one) or you can click on the 3 dots to the right of the template and define multiple templates that you can switch between using the pull-down:

For something so easy, I would normally make a one or two minute video showing how to do it ... but I use FS Capture to make the videos and I can't show you how to use it while it's already capturing video.

Use the radio buttons to specify what you want to capture, in my case usually a rectangular region or the full-screen. Use the check box if you want to record audio ... the pull-down lets you choose between Speakers, Microphone, or Both. And then you'll usually want to click on Options to verify other settings. Since it remembers all your choices, you don't have to keep doing this every time. When you click on Options, you get a menu with 5 more tabs:

If you're capturing streaming video, you probably want a frame rate of 30. Using a frame rate of 10 is fine for capturing my voice and how to do something on the computer. The is also where you say if you want to capture the mouse pointer:

On the Output tab you'll find the template used as the default name given to the video when you save it. You also noticed that I unchecked the box which causes it to start playing over again as soon as you save it:

Once you've set all the options, go back to the window you want to record. Usually you'll want to change the playback so it's full-screen so you're recording maximum quality. Once you're ready to go, click on the red Record button:

It won't really start recording yet, after a few seconds it will summarize your options and you'll set a Start button which is what finally starts the recording. Don't forget, you'll need to use Cntl+F10 to stop it and there will be nothing on the screen to remind you.

Hmmm. Y'know iOS has a built-in screen recorder; you enable it in the Control Center Settings. It captures a full-screen video that you can edit with the Photos app, or any 3rd party video app. I suspect that you will not find a 3rd party app that works as you wish, because of Apple's privacy concerns about screen access.

I think that's correct. I don't think there is any recording app that can do those things. There are editing apps that can accomplish all of that after the fact. The photos app can do some basic cropping. iMovie can do much more (see the App Store description. LumaFusion is the ultimate, and can do virtually anything.

Thank you very much @uncledave , @wim and @tpj for your reaction and explanations.

After 3 months with my first iPad, I find that I had somewhat exaggerated ideas that everything on iOS would be better from a user perspective than on Windows. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but I'm successfully getting used to it.

If you've listed the best 3rd party apps that could be used, the selection is quite limited for what I need (and vice versa, I don't need)

FCPX (Final Cut Pro( has a subscription model - nope.

DaVinci - 3.3GB, $95 - overkill

LumaFusion is primarily for video editing - don't need this feature at all.

ProCreate Dreams - I'll look into it, though I think it'll be more for creative painters than for adding annotations to a screenshot.

Now I'm sorry I didn't state in my initial post why I need such an app.

99% of the time I use FSCapture to document an issue that I report on. The vast majority of cases are about taking a picture of part of the screen and adding graphical annotations (arrows, frames, text annotations). This is the basis to which I would like to find a suitable application.

Always a good idea to describe your intended use case:) If reporting issues with a (static?) screen shot is all you need, then no need to buy any apps. Use the iPad button combo to take the screen shot, then open it in Photos and hit Edit. You can easily add frames, arrows, text, etc., in various colors, and crop the selection. Give it a try.

@filo01 said:

Now I'm sorry I didn't state in my initial post why I need such an app.

99% of the time I use FSCapture to document an issue that I report on. The vast majority of cases are about taking a picture of part of the screen and adding graphical annotations (arrows, frames, text annotations). This is the basis to which I would like to find a suitable application.

You probably already have all the tools you need right in iOS. Just do a screenshot, then go to the photos app and hit Edit. There you can crop to whatever are you need, add arrows, boxes, text, callout boxes, highlighter pen, free drawing pen, all kinds of shapes, a magnifier etc.

Yes. The inbuilt ios screen recorder has an inbuilt 3 second delay. Not sure if that can be adjusted but it's not really important as you can just quickly edit your video. Same with a screenshot, it can be edited after.

The only feature I ask of Apple's Built-In screen-capture function is to indicate finger or pencil taps on the recorded video.

I HATE using a mouse with the iPad as it totally destroys 'touch experience' which is the main reason I love using the iPad.

Sometimes it could be nice to be able to overlay the front-camera when screen-recording, this can be done when using for example Keynote to record a presentation by just adding a live-video object using the front-camera into the presentation...

Thanks for mentioning Photos, I thought it is just a browser.

The delay is very useful when you can't (or find it difficult) to press the iPad's screen capture buttons. For example I want to capture event caused by my playing on MIDI keyboard or guitar playing. So my hands are "busy" somewhere else at that moment.

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