In a world where there exist tons and tons of free apps for literally anything that the mind can think of, it is possible for a few good ones to get swept under the rug without being noticed. Taking screen grabs or screenshots is a very elementary purpose and we are surrounded by apps that can perform the task in a very professional capacity, but that’s just it. Most functionalities and applications are limited to simply grabbing a section of your computer screen. Any further customizations to your screenshots require you to resort to other apps, and this is where Flameshot comes into play. Not only does this software allow you to take screenshots effortlessly, but it also customizes them with the myriad features that it has to offer.
Flameshot screenshot software for Windows PC
Flameshot is a simple, convenient, yet powerful tool that helps you take customizable screenshots. The software is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS (here, its functionality will be demonstrated on a Windows OS device). It is available in 32 and 64-bit versions for the Windows OS, and for this review, I will be using the 64-bit version.
The installation process is straightforward, the same as you would experience with any software. It doesn’t take a huge chunk of your storage, unlike its counterparts, so it’s speedy, too.
Once you click on the app post-installation, it will take you to the screen-capturing mode. Although the freeware offers you a bunch of different tools to play around with and make them look the way you want to, I will be talking about a few of my favorite ones below.
Incrementing count bubbles – You may sometimes want to document a screen where the elements shown are ordered in some way that isn’t very evident. Using the count bubbles, you can paste numbers on these elements as shown in the picture below. You can customize the color of the bubble by right-clicking and choosing the one you prefer.
Markers – Computers are increasingly being used by students for all sorts of purposes, studies being one of them. Using Flameshot, you can place a marker on some important subject matter that your screenshot may hold. The default thickness of a marker is too high, as you can see in the picture, but it can be adjusted using your computer’s Mouse Wheel. Again, the color of the marker is customizable and is not limited to the ones you get to pick from after right-clicking. You can choose anyone out of the spectrum of colors offered in the tool settings. Similar to the marker are some other settings, like a paintbrush, rectangles, circles, etc.
Configurations related to the selected area – Most screenshots apps only give you one shot at getting the required portion of the screen (the one that you want to crop out) right in one go, but not Flameshot. After having selected an area, you can either choose to expand it, shrink it, move it or perform all of them at the same time.
Size Counter – In the settings array is a counter which shows the dimensions of the screenshot you have taken. At first, this may seem like a menial, pointless addition to the toolkit, but it can be really useful. Often on the web, we come across pages where the photo that is required to be uploaded has to conform to certain, set dimensions or size. This counter comes in handy in these scenarios and as mentioned above about the configurations of picture sizes, it helps you make sure that the dimensions of your screenshot are exactly how much you want them to be.
There are several more features, like the ability to add text to a screenshot, copy one on your keyboard, or undo customization. You can also configure the Flameshot software settings. To do this, right-click on the Flameshot icon from the system tray and click on Configurations. Here, you have several things you can deal with if you don’t like their default settings, like the opacity of the area outside the selection, the standard name by which your files are saved, shortcut keys for the various settings that the app has to offer, and a bunch of other things, as shown in the picture below.
If you choose to open the launcher instead of taking a screenshot straight away, you get a few more things to dangle with. One is the option to take a picture of the entire screen, where you can select ‘Entire Screen’ and click on ‘Take a screenshot,’ and the other is setting up a time gap between giving the command and initializing the screen capture mode.
So, to conclude, I feel like this is one of the best choices out there for people to take professional screen captures on the web.
It may take you some time to get used to it if you have been using the default Windows Print Screen setting or some other screen grab software, but it will prove to be a really powerful tool once you get a hang of it. You can download it from flameshot.org.
