The Best for Basic Screenshots: Greenshot

Greenshot is one of the most popular screenshot utilities for Windows. It’s a simple tool that runs in your system tray. You can press one of its user-configurable keyboard shortcuts or right-click the system tray icon and select an option to start taking a screenshot.

This tool can take screenshots of your full desktop, a window, a region, or the last region you took a screenshot of. The Preferences window includes a variety of options, including a screenshot delay if you need time to set up screenshots after initiating them. This is important if, for example, you want to show a shot of an open menu that pressing the Alt or Ctrl key might close.

After you’ve taken a screenshot, Greenshot can either copy it to your clipboard, save it to a location of your choice, open it in a Microsoft Office application, open it in an image editor, or upload it directly to the Imgur image hosting site for easy sharing. The included External Command Plugin lets you add programs to this list. Greenshot doesn’t have any built-in annotation options, but it’s a powerful utility that runs in your system tray and works very well.

Greenshot is completely free and is an open-source application.