Puush: a quick and easy way to take and share screen captures
Sharing an image of your desktop can often be a useful way to help someone understand a point you’re trying to make, but making this happen isn’t always entirely straightforward. You’ll have to figure out how best to capture the screen, get the image to a file and send the file to your contact, for instance. And while none of this is complicated, it can take a little while, especially if you need to share several images with several people.
Puush is an application and web service which can greatly simplify this process, though, by capturing your image, uploading it and making the file accessible to others in a single step -- potentially a real time-saver.
To begin you must first create a new puush account. The process is much the same as any other, in that you have to provide the company with your email address, click the "verify this account" link they’ll send you, and choose a user name. Enter your account user name and password into the puush client and setup is complete.
Capturing an image of your current program window is then as easy as pressing Ctrl+Shift+2. Puush doesn’t ask you for a file name or anything else: it simply captures the screen, uploads it to your account, then retrieves a short URL for this image (of the form http://puu.sh/xxxxx) and copies it to your clipboard. Pass this on to someone via email, instant message or any other means, and entering the URL will display your image.
Puush doesn’t stop with single window captures, of course. It can also grab your whole desktop (Ctrl+Shift+3) and a freehand rectangular area (Ctrl+Shift+4), as well as uploading the contents of the clipboard (Ctrl+Shift+5) or some other file you need to share (Ctrl+Shift+U).
This is all very configurable, too (you can choose new hotkeys if the defaults aren’t convenient, for instance). And the puush client is amazingly lightweight, typically requiring less than 1MB of RAM on our test PC.
The free version does have a couple of limitations: you can’t upload files larger than 20MB, and you get a relatively small 200MB of online storage space. If this is a problem then paying an annual $15 for puush Pro will allow individual files of up to 250MB, and provide unlimited storage overall.
If you just need to share screen grabs or small files in a hurry, though, puush is a quick and easy way to make it happen, delivering plenty of functionality with the absolute minimum of hassle and system impact.