Taking a screenshot is almost second nature to content creators, social media managers, designers, marketers, product managers, and developers. It serves many uses, such as simple annotations, quick demonstrations, and saving something for posterity. Given how useful the humble screenshot is, these free apps unlock its true potential.
1. Screenstab (Web): Turn Screenshots Into Gorgeous Header Images
If you want to jazz up a plain old screenshot but don’t have the image editing skills to do so, Screenstab is the way to go. It’s one of those mind-boggling image editors to do Photoshop effects without Photoshop.
Load your screenshot in Screenstab, and the web app will analyze it for a few seconds before giving you a zoomed-in, tilted version of the original screenshot, with some smart blurring and other effects. The end result looks like the kind of header images of product shots you see on many websites.
You can adjust the image by scrolling anywhere on the page to tilt and rotate along the X, Y, and Z axes. Then, click anywhere on the image to apply the main focus there, while the rest gets blurred. You can choose five levels of blurring, from none to extreme.
Once you’ve adjusted it the way you want, download the SD version of the image for free, which unfortunately comes with a watermark from Screenstab. The Pro version gives you more abilities to edit the image and download HD versions without a watermark.
2. Pretty Snap (Web): Add Backgrounds and Patterns to Beautify Screenshots
You must have seen people sharing screenshots on social media with a beautiful background or demo shots on websites that stand out because of their striking imagery. It’s pretty easy to make these yourself with Pretty Snap.
Upload a screenshot to the web app and choose from a range of ten different background patterns. Each pattern has an ideal color already recommended, but you can change that to any color from a full palette. And if that’s not enough, you can further choose six shades (light to dark) of that, where the pattern adjusts accordingly (dark to light).
The screenshot can be centered in the background or aligned to the left, right, or bottom. You can also adjust the size of the screenshot to the background. Once you’re satisfied with the results, download it for free as a simple PNG file with no watermarks.
3. Screenshotr (Web): Easiest Way to Make Beautiful Website Screenshots
Screenshotr is the easiest way to take a website’s screenshot and present it with a beautiful background. It offers several features that make the process more convenient for someone who does this often. This includes:
Browser: You can add a fake browser window, choosing between styles of macOS, Windows 10, Mondrian, and Windows 98. Of course, you can skip this too. You can also toggle the address bar on and off in the browser. Background: Choose from a solid color, gradient patterns, an Unsplash image, or upload your background picture. Sizing: You can set a custom height and width for both the browser and the larger canvas. Screenshotr also offers preset social media image sizes for Instagram posts, Instagram or Facebook stories, tweets, YouTube thumbnails, and posts on Product Hunt or Dribbble. Mobile: You can also generate vertical screenshots of websites for mobile phone screens, adjusting the background and the type of smartphone.
So all you have to do is put the URL in the address bar to generate a screenshot of a web page. The rest is made so much easier by Screenshotr.
4. Shottr (macOS): Best Free Screenshot App for Macs
Shottr is not just the best screenshot app for macOS—it’s the best screenshot app for any platform. It’s flabbergasting that this is a completely free tool, and a lot of thought has been put into making it so useful. Among the notable features are:
Easily pixelate or blur any sensitive information to remove it from the screenshot. Take scrolling screenshots of any web page or chat. Copy-paste text from any screenshot into a notepad. Annotate screenshots with arrows, lines, drawings, and text.
Shottr is built for macOS and is lightning-quick at its job. For example, you can set a custom hotkey for screenshots, as well as a folder to save all your screenshots automatically to, instead of clutter the desktop.
As of now, Shottr is only available for macOS, which is a pity for those on other platforms. Still, there are some excellent screenshot apps and tools for Windows that are better than simply hitting PrtScr.
Download: Shottr for macOS (Free)
5. Jaadoo (Android, iOS): Searchable Screenshots on Mobile Through OCR
If you take a large number of screenshots on your phone, it leads to a cluttered mess in which it’s difficult to find an image later. Jaadoo (meaning magic in Hindi) makes it easy to organize mobile screenshots and uses AI to make them searchable.
The free version of the app analyzes and manages your last 200 screenshots, using AI and OCR (optical character recognition) to “read” them to make them searchable. For example, just type the word “bill” and you’ll see all screenshots that have the word in it, or seem to be in that category. You can quickly sort screenshots by date and add tags to make them easy to find by category than search.
The best part is that Jaadoo is focused on privacy and works offline. So all analysis of screenshots happens on your phone natively, and no private data leaves your phone.
Download: Jaadoo for Android | iOS (Free)
Learn Screenshot Shortcuts
While these tools will level up how you use screenshots, you still need to spend a little time learning shortcuts. Most people still press the PrtScr key or hold down two buttons simultaneously on their phone. But you have much better options now.
For example, Alt + PrtScr captures only the active app on Windows, while Shift + Command + 4 on macOS lets you specify which part of the screen you want to capture. Phones support gestures like triple-tap and triple-swipe. The sooner you learn shortcuts, the better your screenshot game will be.
