PicPick – Feature Packed Screen Capture Tool

SnagIt is the undisputed champion of screen capture tools. Unfortunately, at $49.95 per license, it’s a tad too expensive for most users. On the other hand the Snipping Tool bundled with Windows 7 is a bit too basic for bloggers, designers, developers and power users. To make things worse, most of the free screen capture utilities available on the web, aren’t really all that better than the Windows 7 Snipping Tool. Even FastStone Screen Capture, which I had reviewed earlier, is now a commercial utility. The good news is that after doing a little bit of digging I have found an worthy replacement – it’s PicPick.

PicPick is a complete solution for all your screen capturing needs. It allows you to capture screenshots, edit them, and even publish them. The main features offered by PicPick can be grouped into the following four categories:

Screen Capturing: PicPick is primarily a screen capture tool, so it’s not surprising that it is extremely good at grabbing screenshots. You can capture the entire screen, active window, window control, scrolling window, selected region or even a free hand region. It even supports dual monitor setups. The only major feature that is missing is the “clear background” option that is offered by the likes of WinSnap and SnagIt.

Image Editing: PicPick includes a primitive image editor that supports basic functions like adding annotations, drawing custom shapes, rotating and resizing images. Some commonly used effects including Blur, Pixelate, Sharpen and Grayscale are also supported.

Image Sharing: Once you are happy with the captured image, you can upload it to a pre-configured FTP account, publish it on Imageshack, Facebook and Twitter, or send it to a desktop application like Microsoft Outlook.

Professional Aids: PicPick also has quite a few nifty tools to help out designers and developers. The most interesting feature is something called a “White Board”, which basically allows you to draw anything on your screen, before capturing a screenshot. Some of the other tools bundled with PicPick include a magnifier, protractor, colour picker and a pixel ruler.

PicPick is completely free for home users. Unfortunately, if you want to use it for commercial purposes, you will have to shell out $19. Even then, it is an option worth considering. It doesn’t have all the features of SnagIt Pro, but it is heck of a lot cheaper than TechSmith’s offering. Moreover, it does have some handy tools for professionals. The other option you can consider is WinSnap. WinSnap is light on features, but is capable of capturing extremely high quality screenshots and is similarly priced.

Download PicPick (5.4 MB)
Version Reviewed: 2.3.3
License: Free for Personal Use
Cost: $19 for Commercial Edition
Operating System: Windows All