"Active Window" vs "Current Screen"- Stupid Newb Question

[Zirconia Wolf]

Sorry for this total newbie questions, but I am brand new to Screenshot Captor & was curious about the different screen capture options that I see available to me.

For instance, what is the difference between the "Active Window" option & the "Screen/Current Monitor" option? How are they different than the "Current Workspace" setting?

Basically what I am after is the appropriate setting(s) that will let me take a picture of whatever is on my screen at the time & shove the picture in a pre-designated folder without any further input from me, other than pressing the appropriate hot-key(s), as I prefer to do my editing at a later time.

I have already got the save options & folder settings selected - even took a few test shots of my desktop - but am now curious as to what specific "hot keys" (other than the usual "Print Screen" button I am used to) I may need to do what I mainly want, which is taking pictures when playing full-screen games (Sims 1 & 2, SimCity4, etc).

While I am waiting for an answer, I just wanted to say that this program looks pretty darn awesome so far! I have been struggling with finding the "perfect" screen-shot program ever since I had to give up Gadwin (which I loved) when I realized that it refused to work with the W7 Aero theme. It was either give up Aero or give up Gadwin, & in the end Gadwin lost as I saw no reason to lose the *eye candy* of Aero just to make it happy. (I'm an "eye candy" gal!)

Ultimately I settled on Fraps (for desktop & in-game pictures) & Screengrab for FireFox (because Fraps wouldn't take online pics) which was working well enough, except that Fraps likes to throw Direct X errors & fail to launch at start up every 3rd or 4th boot-up & it also seems to be rather slow to respond at times. (I would play a game & take a bunch of screenshots only to find that Fraps either *missed* the first several shots I took or just gave me a black screen for the first few pictures.)

Having grown tired of *working around* Fraps, I started looking for another program & stumbled upon this site & Screenshot Captor. So far I am incredibly impressed & can't wait to see how well it really handles...which I plan to find out once I know what the different capture options mean.

Thanks (again) for this slick little program & thanks for putting up with my (likely silly) newbie questions!

[mouser]

Welcome to the site Zirconia 

I hope Screenshot Captor suits your needs -- if not, hopefully the forum can still be useful to you -- we are a friendly bunch.

You've asked a few different questions, let's see how many we can answer.

The easy ones first:  If you want Screenshot Captor to take a picture and just shove it in a folder without any further input, then you'll want to change the option for what Screenshot Captor does after a capture.  It will always save it in a folder, but by default after a capture it pops up a window asking you what you want to do.  I'm like you I don't need that pop-up post-capture dialog.

So the next time that post-capture popup comes up after a capture, look for the option on the very bottom that says "After next capture:" and choose "Stay Minimized in Tray".  That will solve that.  Then just open the Screenshot Captor window from the system tray when you want to view your captured screenshots.

[mouser]

You also asked about the difference between the "Active Window" option & the "Screen/Current Monitor" option? How are they different than the "Current Workspace" setting?

The difference between "Screen/Current Monitor" and "Workspace" only comes in if you have multiple monitors.  The former will only capture the current monitor, the latter will capture multiple monitors.  If you have one monitor, you should buy another so that you can use this function

Active window is when you want to capture only the contents of a non-fullscreen, non-maximized window, which is occupying only a portion of your screen.  By default Screenshot Captor will take a bit longer to capture such windows on Vista and Windows 7, as it will attempt to do capture the round corners, background transparency and shadow effects on such windows (You can disable this fancy if you want).

You can find the hotkeys for the different capture modes by right-clicking on the Screenshot Captor icon in the system tray.

[mouser]

Ok lastly, let's talk about capturing full screen game windows, since that's what you seem to be most interested in.

For that you would just want to hit PrtScr and configure SC to not show that post-capture dialog, and you should be all set.

However, if you find that some games always capture a fully black screen when you do so (but normal capture of applications work), then this may mean that you are dealing with a game which uses accelerated, low-level directX graphics that SC cannot capture.  This can happen for example with movie players as well.  In such cases, you may need to find a program (like Fraps) specifically designed for capturing directX, or a more extreme solution may be to disable hardware acceleration for your video card in your display preferences control panel -- but that's extreme because it can reduce game performance.

[Zirconia Wolf]

Awesome- thanks for the clarification! 

I just may have to buy a second monitor so I can play with the "Workspace" & "Current Monitor" settings... 

So far I am really impressed by Screenshot Captor & even if it turns out not to work in all my games (but I'm thinking positive) I plan on keeping it as my "main" capture program, as it's really nice to have a single program that can capture images on the desktop & online.

Thanks again- both for the nifty program & for taking the time to answer my newbie questions!