FastStone Capture is a screen capture and screen video recording tool developed by FastStone Soft. With it, you can take pictures of full screen or active windows of various shapes and sizes. It can also be used to record while you scroll a page or run a program. When the image or video is ready, FastStone will open your work in the built-in editor. You will find many editing tools such as drawing, cropping, resizing and shading. The final product can be saved in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF, PDF and WMV file formats.

Creating a Screen Header

FastStone opens from a small grip panel. This panel is divided into three types of tools: Screenshot, Screen Recorder, and Output. Screen capture tools represent different capture functions, namely: active window, window or object, rectangular area, freehand area, full screen, scrolling window and fixed area. Although they are easily accessible from the Control Panel, you can take a screenshot by pressing a hotkey or right-clicking the FastStone icon in the taskbar. Each capture function has its own hotkey, and the system tray icon offers functions in a pop-up menu.

Before turning on the screen header, it is important to indicate your desired destination. You’ll find them in the Output drop-down menu. You will see 10 places where you can save the captured image, namely: Editor, Clipboard, File, Auto-Save File, Printer, Email, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Internet with FTP Server. You can also have FastStone send a preview of your image before saving. This can be done by checking the “View in Editor” checkbox.

There are also 6 additional output tools that you can use to enhance your photos: Delay Before Shooting, Enable Mouse Pointer, Copy to Clipboard, Auto Caption, and Watermark. If you choose any of the 6 tools, it is more important to preview your work. There you can check the image or edit the text you need to apply.

Record your screen

Recorder is the only screen recording tool. It allows you to record screen changes, computer sound, mouse movements and clicks. There are also editing tools or special features that you can use similar to screen capture tools. Before you’re ready to record, click the film strip icon in the Capture panel. A pop-up window will appear with modification options. First, you must select one of the four areas that you will record: Window, Rectangular Area, Full Screen Without Taskbar, and Full Screen.

FastStone doesn’t record computer audio by default, so you’ll need to check the Record Audio box to enable it. Once you’ve set these settings, click the red circle icon to start recording. Recording will stop if you click this icon again. After that, you can click “Edit” to add effects and graphics. The video file will be saved once you are finished; however, FastStone can only save Windows Media Video or WMV files.

Simple but practical gripping tool

FastStone is a compact tool because all of its main tools are located on the control panel. Once you get started, you will see that it offers various modification options to record or capture the screen the way you prefer.

While it may not offer video file formats other than WMV, it does support a significant variety of formats for screen savers. The graphics, effects and annotation tools available in the program are also sufficient to highlight visual cues. Overall, FastStone is a suitable tool for streamers and office professionals who need to share their screen with groups of people.