Take Fancy Screenshots With Shutter

While the native screenshot applications found in most Linux distributions are fine for quick screengrabs, you need something heftier if you plan to highlight, annotate, resize or otherwise tinker with images. Shutter is a great little open source app that lets you take quick snapshots of your computer screen and dress them up all sorts of ways.

Use Shutter to take a timed or instant screenshot of your entire desktop, a single window, or a particular area of your screen. You can even dispatch it onto the Internet to take a snapshot of a Web site and bring you back the results.

Once you have the shot you need, use the highlighting tool to call attention to certain areas of the image or the pencil to draw freehand. Spotlight any section of your screenshot with arrows, circles, boxes, ovals, or shading. Additional plugins let you add watermarks, 3D effects, border effects, and even turn your picture into a jigsaw puzzle piece.

When you have your screenshot looking just the way you want it, upload them to an image hosting service like Flickr or simply store them on your local hard drive. Shutter will also track the history of your editing sessions, copy screenshots to the clipboard, and automatically generate thumbnails of every shot you take.

There are plenty of screenshot applications available for Linux but few are as full-featured and intuitive as Shutter. Originally designed for Ubuntu, there also are some packages available for other distributions. As more members of the open source community become aware of this fantastic tool, builds for additional distros are sure to follow.