Jing – Free Windows & Mac screen capturing and recording software

Posted on September 23, 2007 at 11:56 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Free Screen Capture Software series!

Debut – Free video capture and screen recording software
ScrnShots – Free screen capture software
Jing – Free Windows & Mac screen capturing and recording software
Create free video screencasts of your desktop using Screencast-o-Matic
ScreenHunter – Free screen capture program
Capture screenshots in Windows with Screenshot Captor
FastStone – Free Windows screen capture software

Jing is a free program from TechSmith that allows to your capture screenshots of your desktop, record your screen, and share screen captures with others instantly. Jing is a unique piece of software for grabbing screenshots of your desktop for two reasons: firstly, because it sits at the top your desktop for instant access and secondly because your images or video can be uploaded and shared with others automatically.

Once you’re finished capturing an image or recording a video of your desktop, click the Share button and Jing automatically places a URL for your content into the clipboard which you can then conveniently paste into any program, such as an email, IM chat, or blog post. All of your screenshots are stored on Screencast.com with a complimentary 200MB of free space.

Once you have Jing installed on your computer, you’ll see the yellow sun icon at the top and center of your desktop:

To capture something on your screen, click on the Jing icon and click on Capture, the left-most button.

Next you’ll see a horizontal and vertical line that you can either click and drag to capture a specific region on your desktop or that you can hover over windows and dialogs to capture those specifically.

Once you’ve chosen the area that you want to capture, you can then choose whether you want to capture an image, record the screen, redo your box or capturing area, or simply cancel. The options appear at the bottom left of the screen capture area.

Finally, you’ll be brought to the last step in the process whereby you can edit your screen capture by adding text, drawing arrows, or drawing boxes on the image. You can then upload your image to Screencast by clicking on the Share button or save it onto your computer directly by clicking Save.

If you click on Share, you’ll need to first create an account on Screencast.com to save your images. Once the image is uploaded, the URL for the image or video will automatically be put into the clipboard.

So if you’ve been looking for a free screen capture utility for Windows or Mac OS X, then Jing is definitely something you should check out. You can easily create movies or videos of desktop or screen using Jing. I used to use SnagIT a lot, but I find Jing to be much more convenient. You can also click on the Settings button to configure the screen capture hotkey and other settings.

[tags]screen capture, video screen capture, screen capture program, free screen capture, how to capture screen[/tags]

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

Comments

4 Responses to “Jing – Free Windows & Mac screen capturing and recording software”

Ali said on : March 28th, 2008 at 2:57 am

I think JOCR is another option as it has built-in character recognition so that you can get text out of your screen-shot.

Ali said on : August 31st, 2009 at 5:19 pm

This is not free. It only makes 5 min videos not more than that

mysoftwareonline.com » Jing - Free Windows & Mac screen capturing and recording software Says:

[...] post by akishore Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Create free video screencasts of your desktop using Screencast-o-Matic Says:

[...] computer! Previously, I had written about another free screen capture and recording software called Jing, but I found that the program crashed a lot while using [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 9:19 am