ScreenMaster 2.11

Overview

ScreenMaster is a highly configurable screen capture software that you can use anytime and for any occasion. It has features that you rarely find in other programs of the same kind, such as the support for saving screenshots in archives to organize them better and save space in the hard disk, or the ability to take screenshots in a site time interval. It is lightweight and won’t bother you while working with other applications, plus it has a simple interface that you can get used to quickly.

Installation

Nothing special in this installation, everything goes smoothly just like in any typical software setup. It will finish very quickly and there is no particular configurations you need to make throughout the steps. Also, it is clean from malware and spyware and doesn’t contain any additional 3^rd party software either.

The supported operating systems are all editions of Windows up to Windows 7.

Interface

First time you open the program you might think that it is quite complicated and puzzling, but rest reassured that it has nothing too confusing. So getting familiar with it is not going to be too troublesome. It is split into 4 tabs: Main Window, Settings, Events and About. In the first tab you will see the main settings that are available in the program, like the screenshot output directory, filename, output file format, image quality percentage, method of saving screenshots, screenshots interval and other options. The Settings tab has some other settings as well. For example, it has options regarding the program’s startup, update checks and specifying of hotkeys for the screenshots and hidden mode activation. The Events tab keeps a log if all the actions you take and the About tab has information about ScreenMaster.

Pros

ScreenMaster has a function in which you define a time interval, and screenshots are taken in this set time period. You can set it to take screenshots every 1 second and this can go up to every 1 hour. When using this feature you have the ability to save all taken screenshots to a ZIP archive in order to have less clutter in your computer and organize them better.

There are several different methods of capturing screenshots that you can use every time. Firstly you pick a filename for your screenshots, and then you can choose the method you want to use. For instance, you can overwrite the previous captured screenshot with every new one that is taken, automatically number them or append the date and time in each one at the end of the filename you defined. Other options include specifying the path and filename to the screenshot or plain copying to clipboard.

You can choose between 3 file formats to save your screenshot as: BMP, JPEG and PNG. Apart from choosing the file type you can also change the image quality to save space, moving a slider and setting the quality percentage. The bigger the percentage, the bigger the quality and the size of the screenshots are going to be.

Hidden mode is another feature of ScreenMaster that will remove itself from the system tray and hide in the background processes. You can assign the hotkeys for activating and deactivating hidden mode, just like you can set the hotkeys for taking screenshots.

The dimensions of the area that you want to take a screenshot of depend on you. Just form a rectangular area with your mouse and then take the screenshot.

Cons

There are no preset dimensions for the capture area. In addition, there are no separate keyboard shortcuts for capturing a variable portion of the screen, fullscreen or active window - you have to switch between these types in the main window or in the tray menu.

Alternatives

Greenshot is a very good freeware that you can use to capture screenshots in a completely customizable way. It has various features, and alongside SnagIt (paid) they seem to be the best screen capturing software. While they both have a huge list of features, SnagIt has some unique ones, such as the ability to record videos too.

Conclusion

ScreenMaster is an affordable and simple yet powerful application that will not disappoint you. If you are interested in a screen capture program, you really have to grab this one’s free trial and test it out today!