It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If this is true then pictures can save you a lot of typing. Adding graphics captured from your screen is a powerful way to make your point in your blog, sales presentation, newsletter, email message or any form of comminucation. One of the tools I use frequently is the screenshot capture application PrintScreen by Gadwin Systems. It allows me to capture part or all of my computer screen to:

• capture a shot of a flash video frame, graphic or photo
• save a screenshot of a website or part of a website
  
• save and send a screenshot of an error message to send to tech support
• capture tables and graphs from a presentations
• save a screen shot of important email messages

You can use these captured screenshots in a great many ways:

• show your web designer a website, graphic, font or design style that you like
• send a screenshot of something funny or interesting to a friend or colleague
• add a graphic or example to your newsletter, blog, or promotional material
• show a friend of colleague how to find or do something on their computer
• enhance presentations with graphics, photos, graphs, charts, table, etc.
  

The installation of PrintScreen is very straightforward. There are two default settings that I normally change after installing PrintScreen. You access the PrintScreen settings by right-clicking on its system tray icon and selecting "Properties...":

• Go to "Image" and change the type of image to "JPEG"
• Go to "Source" and change the captured area to "Rectagular Area." This will allow you to select the area that you want to capture.

PrintScreen is a very important tool for my day-to-day work. It's easy to use and free! You may want to opt for the PrintScreen Pro application ($24.95) which has a built-in image editor and annotation utility. Personally I use Paint.net or GIMP image editors to make edits or annotations on images that I capture using PrintScreen.

Just a bit of warning, be careful that you don't violate any copyright laws when reusing images captured on the Internet. Make the proper attributions as necessary or pay for the proper copyright use.