Free Programs for Taking Screenshots in Games

For years, it's been a bother. You know what I mean: Pressing Print Screen and then hopefully remembering upon exiting a game to open up MS Paint or GiMP or a similar program, and paste and save. And this method isn't always that reliable at all.

Some developers have thought ahead, and made it so that if you press a predefined screenshot button (usually F12 or so), your screen will be caught and automatically sent to the game's directory. Other games even work with the print screen button.

Then you've got games that haven't yet realized that some people want to take screenshots in their games, and you have to resort to the above mentioned print screen, paste in paint, look at the sometimes ghastly results. And if you want to take multiple screens, you have to alt+esc, and paste, and then listen to your PC moan as its CPU usage goes through the roof, with all these applications running.

So anyway, I read that FRAPS has a new release out as of late August 2009. Now FRAPS sin't free. There's a full version for paying members, and there's another version for the rest of us, which I hear is horrible as it leaves watermarks on your images.

There is a similar program called HyperSnap, which also leaves watermarks on your images if it isn't the full registered version.

So, I went on to try a program called Screenshot Pilot, which is free, but found that it was horrible. I tried following the instructions, only to find that sometimes the program works, and other times it doesn't. And the results are also sometimes quite cr@ppy. When I set it to save the screen in JPEG format, it turned it black&white without me telling it to. Sort of reminiscent of Paint actually...

Plus it hasn't been updated in four years.

Then I realized all along what had been sitting on my hard drive, copied off of a PC Format DVD. It's simple. It's small. It's free. It works.

It's called Screenshoter. You should get the latest version (v 1.2) however- it works even better. All you do is click "Screenshot" or press Print Screen after setting your directory settings and image format, and your screen will be saved to that location. And it works in games too.

Simple yet effective. These types of apps are the best.

Free Programs for Taking Screenshots in Games