Lightshot Review: The Fastest Way to Take Customizable Screenshots

very good
key review info
application features
  • Custom hotkeys
  • (6 more, see all...)

Taking screenshots can prove to be a tedious and complex task if you appeal to advanced graphic capture utilities. The thing is that you don’t even need all those professional tools for processing the captured images most of the time. Lightshot comes with a solution for simplifying such a task and has an ambitious plan on its agenda: to provide the exact necessary tools for taking a customizable screenshot in the fastest way possible. 

Lightshot is available for download on Windows and Mac. It can be installed for free. There are also several extensions especially tailored to work hand in hand with your web browser, namely Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera.

Lightshot does not simply capture an essential area of your desktop, but it comes with editing tools and sharing options. Plus, it allows you to save snapshots to the disk, print them, and copy them to the clipboard. Hotkeys can be employed for speeding up screenshot-related jobs.

Simple way for taking screenshots

As soon as you finish with the installation process, you can find Lightshot sitting quietly in the system tray. The best part about working with this program is that you do not need to consult a help manual and watch tutorials in order to understand how it works.

The GUI looks highly intuitive
The GUI looks highly intuitive

The learning curve is smooth and simple so you’ll find yourself mastering its functions in a short amount of time. To make everything even more familiar, the tool lets you take screenshots using the ‘PrtScn’ button. In addition, you may activate this particular mode via system tray actions.

When the screenshot grabbing mode is active, a semi-transparent veil is placed upon your desktop. You are allowed to select a user-defined region of the screen. The custom region presents the main focus while the background is left in a semi-opaque state. The application reveals the size of the area and lets you drag and drop it to the desired desktop position or resize its dimensions.

Editing features

The editing process does not take place in a special panel. It is automatically activated as soon as you finish taking the current screenshot. The editing tools are revealed directly in the main window.

You can make use of a pen for drawing free-hand designs, insert lines, embed custom text, point to important ideas with the aid of arrows, add rectangles, change the color of the editing utilities, as well as undo your actions in case you are not happy with the final results.

Last but not least, you can make use of a marker in order to highlight essential parts from your snapshots. The editing options are placed at the right side of the editing environment, while the saving and sharing utilities are displayed at the bottom of the primary window.

Saving and sharing options

You are given the freedom to print the current snapshot or save it to a file on your computer, provided that you specify the filename and saving directory. The pictures can be exported to JPEG, PNG, or BMP file format.

Copying the image to the clipboard is also possible so you can quickly transfer it into other third-party programs, such as Word, Paint, Photoshop, and Corel Painter 2016.

You can share screenshots via Twitter, Facebook or other online platforms
You can share screenshots via Twitter, Facebook or other online platforms

You can upload your snapshots to prntscr.com, share images via Twitter, Facebook, VK, and Pinterest, as well as look for similar images on Google.

In case you opt for setting up an account and signing in at prntscr.com, you are allowed to keep track of all your screenshots. You can check out a history with all of them, view snapshots displayed in your own gallery, add captions, and remove images that you no longer need.

In case you are on the hunt for more editing features, you can rely on the online Pixlr Editor for altering your screenshots. It comes packed with a pen, brush and blur tools, custom text notes, highlighting options, brightness and contrast adjustments, and various filters, just to name a few of its remarkable parameters.

Configuration settings

Lightshot hides several configuration parameters which help you automatically copy a link to the clipboard after uploading files and automatically close the uploading window at the end of the process.

Furthermore, you can show or hide notifications about copying and saving files, reveal the same region as the previous one used for taking screenshots, and include or exclude the mouse cursor in/from the screenshots.

You may reassign user-defined hotkeys for taking snapshots, uploading photos, and taking a fullscreen snapshot and saving the photo to a folder on your computer.

Other important tweaking parameters worth being mentioned enable you to set up the file format used for uploading files, as well as configure proxy parameters.

We have tested Lightshot on Windows 8.1 Pro and noticed that the application runs smoothly and without errors. It is not a resource hog so you can keep it running in the background without worrying that it affects the overall performance of the computer.

The Good 

The intuitive interface makes it realty easy for you to take screenshots and edit or share snapshots on the fly. You can use hotkeys, embed custom text notes, and highlight data. Lightshot is speedy and delivers very good output results. 

The Bad

We haven’t come across bugs while working with Lightshot. However, advanced parameters are not integrated. You cannot adjust the font and size of the text embedded in the picture, automatically save snapshots to a custom location, apply special effects, insert text/image watermarks, add shadow, set a delay time before taking screenshots, and capture images using different modes (e.g. application, window, object), just to name a few professional options. 

The Truth

If you are not looking for sophisticated tools in a screenshot grabber, Lightshot comes packed with the essential features for helping you capture, edit, share, print, and save screenshots. It’s probably one of fastest and simplest programs available on the market for taking customizable snapshots and it represents an excellent replacement for Windows Snipping Tool. 

user interface 4
features 3
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
NEXT REVIEW: ACDSee Ultimate

Lightshot (10 Images)

The GUI looks highly intuitiveYou can control Lightshot via system trayYou can edit screenshots using a pen, marker, and text notesYou can share screenshots via Twitter, Facebook or other online platformsScreenshots can be copied to the clipboard or uploaded to prntscr.com
+5more