Using Screenpresso to Make and Edit a Screen Captures

The basic version of Screenpresso is free and works on Windows PCs only.  I went ahead and purchased the Pro version (about $25 – one time).  The main reason is that I like the rounded corners on my screenshots.

Screenpresso connects to your PrintScreen button.  When you click on that key a cross-hair appears on your screen and you drag your mouse to mark the area you want.

Screenpresso – Screen Capture Features

Screenpresso has been updated several times in the last few years. I didn’t realize how much until I strted to update this post.

A few very nice features are

1. ScreenPresso will leave any menus open while you make your captures.  I have used other packages that clicking on the screen capture hotkey automatically closed any drop-down menus that were open.  Since I usually wanted to show that menu and what was in it, this was a problem.  Screenpresso solved that problem.
2. ScreenPresso automatically saves your screen captures onto your hard disk.  This is a real-time-saver.  You have an editor which allows you to scroll through the screen captures and pick the one you want so you can modify it or save it elsewhere. If you go back and find the capture file, all of the items that Screenpresso added are still editable, moveable, resizeable, and more.
3. You can capture video as well as static screens.
4. Screenpresso can do a screen capture that shows more than what you can see on the screen. It lets you scroll and merge everything into one image.
5. OCR -Screenpresso can convert the text in your screenshot image into editable text. Capturing screens with bullet points and then converting those bullet points into text means that your Windows search can find the words. As long as they are buried in an image, most searches will not be able to see the words. Screenpresso solves that problem. The text taken out of an image also takes up less space than the image.
6. Screenpresso lets you add to your original screen capture. The next screens show you the editor.

Editing and Enhancing Screen Capture Images

ScreenPresso Edit Screen – most of the editing menu options have been moved to the left side of eh screen.

#1 – Activate the Arrows function – after choosing the arrow style and
the color you want, you can click your mouse and drag to create an arrow
#2 –  Create a box on the screen
#3 –  Create Text on the Screen
#4 Text in a box
#5 – A number in a circle. Every time you click to drop a circle, the number increments by one. Often used to number the arrows you draw on the screen. Bote tht this icon has an orange drag circle when you double click to see the box around the circle. You can drag the orange and creaate line that connects the circle with another element.
#6. Drag over an area to highlight it.
#7 – Draw an ellipse on the screen
#8 – Blur an area on the screen
#9 – Add an image (merge two screenshots together if you wish)
#10 – Draw a magnifying glass
v#11 – A group of Icons – smiley faces, bugs, and others.
#12 – A Magnifier that does magnify an area.
#13 – Draw a brace on the screen

Note: If you double-click any of these elements, a rectangle with drag nodes will appear. One of the nodes will be colored red. If you click on that a menu will appear with properties you can change. Things like, color, thickness, glow, drop shadow, and much more.

Note 2: The right-click menu is specific to Screenpresso when you are in their editor.

Here is the right click menu and the properties menu for the “number in a circle” (#5) element.

I’m not going into all the options. That would take a book. I will note that the right-click menu also varies depending on what you click on. It has the ability to move layers backwards or forwards to make changes to which element is hidden or partially hidden and which element is in front.

Here is a more detailed view of the properties menu for a circle with a number in it.

You can see the red box in the upper right corner of the number 14.  Hovering on that box opened the arrow properties box. Inside the pop-up screen, you can see the arrow color, size, shadow, and other characteristics. You can change them.

The Top Menu in Screenpresso

When I originally wrote this post, the only menu that existed was at the top. Now we have 13 elements in the left side menu and 11 at the top.

1. Copy to Clipboard and copy elements you have added or changed into a file in the folder where Screenpressomsaves it raw files.
2. – Save As – Save the PNG to a folder of your choice.
3. – Print
4. – Properties – Screenpresso lets you create a title for the file, and a description and it leaves a big space where you can number items on the image and then describe what each number means. It is nice to save these in the files. That insures that they don’t get separated in some process down the line. ScreenPresso also captures the URL and more information about when and where the screen capture was taken.
   .4. – Copy Image – The important option )for me) is the OCR option. It also lets you copy part of the image to the clipboard and blurs part of the image.
5. – Undo and Redo – Before you exit the editor, you can undo changes you made and also put the changes you undid back with the redo command. These are the same as Ctrl-z and Ctrl-Y.
6. – Crop lets you trip parts of the image off the edges.
7. – Cut Out lets you copy sare a section out of the image.
8. – Resize lets you shrink or expand the whole image.
9. – Resize Canvas. Usually, an image and the “canvas” that it is on are the same sizes. This option lets you create blank space around the image. Since they have a “text wrap around” option, it is obvious that one use is to write about an image without putting the text on top of the image.
10. – Borders- This allows you to add some transparent space around the images and then round the corners. IMHO, it looks much nicer than the sharp edges and corners that normal screen captures produce.
11. One-click SEND TO THE WEB. Screenpresso has over a dozen places where you can send a copy of the PNG file with one click. Mine has a) Screenpresso’s drive, b) email, c) Google Drive, and d) Microsoft’s Onedrive as defaults. There are over a dozen other places you can activate, like Dropbox and Evernote.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) -Turning an Image into Text

Screenpresso has a built-in Optical Character Recognition feature (OCR). Here is an example

After you capture a screen and double-click it in the gallery of images that pops up, click the COPY IMAGE control and a small menu pops up. One of the two options is EXTRACT TEXT PRESENT IN THE IMAGE. The first time you click this, Screenpresso will pause and install the OCR software that it uses. Then you will see a scroll bar that shows you that it is working. Then a screen like this pops up with the text. It isn’t always perfect, but it is quite good.

Click the option that says “Copy Selection and close” or the one that says “Copy All and Close”

Now you can paste the text. Here is the example from the screen above

You can see that the text is pretty much exactly the same as it was earlier in this post.

There is q large error at the bottom where it lost track of the numbers and the text, but that is easy to fix. Here is the sequence.

1. You capture text or open an image from the gallery.
2. You do the OCR and click on COPY AND CLOSE. That put the text into the clipboard.
3. th3 53mptatioj is the click the green PASTE button at the left end of the top manu. That puts the image into the clipboard, wiping out the text.
4. You need to paste the text somewhere (like Evernote) before you paste the image. You can close the image using the small x at the top. That does not overwrite the text in the clipboard.

Finding the Screenpresso Gallery of Images

One thing that is not readily apparent is how you open the screen that shows you all the screenshots you have saved.   Click the small icon in your tray and then click on the red arrow (Screenpresso’s icon) I have chosen to have it always visible, but you can always find it in the tray of apps.

The Screenpresso Screen Capture Image Gallery

Open Screenpresso’s Image Gallery

When you click on the icon (and after you capture part of your screen), this window opens.  You can scroll through all of the screenshots you have captured.  You can edit, rename or delete them.   I usually save the ones I will use in a blog post or eBook into a special folder with a name that reminds me about what I wanted to use the shot for.

Screenpresso’s Image Gallery

ScreenPresso – This shows All Your Captured Images One of the nice things is that you can double-click on an image you already edited and edit it some more. This feature is especially helpful when you realize that you skipped a step and need to add an arrow and renumber the arrows.

Screenpresso’s Setting Menu

There is a small wrench on the top line of the gallery. When you click on this, a long list of properties appears. There is an option to use F8 to keep that list on top.

The two main things I changed are:

1. Under Screen Shots there is an option to capture the cursor. For some documentation, it is nice to show where I am clicking.
2. Under Workspace I move the default folder where Screempresso keeps its files to my largest drive and set the number of images to keep to 10,000. I may need something years from now.

SUMMARY

Screenpresso is a very powerful screen capture program with a built-in editor and OCR capabilities. It will make lots of daily jobs easier and more attractive. It is pretty obvious that it is being developed as a Mark-up tool for various kinds of projects. That is our gain 🙂

Until next time, you have a Great Day!  Oh Hale Yes!  🙂