Weekend productivity tools (PicPick)

Weekend arrives, this spare time period you've been waiting for during the hard-working week days...

Yes, a bit of time for yourself, you expect.... Imagine the scene: you are going to read about these interesting things you've been collecting in your reading wish-list, when one of your lovely sons or daughters comes in asking for help for their homework... Let's work again!!!

As you can suppose, today's homework is influenced by new technologies: cloud platforms for distributing and collecting information and homework, word processing tools, animated presentations... ¿daddy can you help me?

It's amazing the abilities nowadays children have developed naturally for using such tools. I must say, I've seen them prepare really attractive presentations (better than mine, uhmm.., that's not very difficult ;)). Thanks good, I still can contribute with my experience (life is life) in tools, tricks and tips!!!

In these duties we were when I came across what I think is a very helpful tool: PicPick for Windows. Important advice: I strongly recommend to decline to install other applications included in the installer.

As stated in its homepage this is an “all-in-one” design tool for everyone:  Full-featured screen capture tool, Intuitive image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel-ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and more…

PicPick's feautes in tray icon menu

As far as I have tried, I can say that it’s a lightweight and very easy to use tool, which exposes all its features through a tray icon you can access quickly. You can configure it to start automatically with your session or call it when you need it.

Its first and main feature is screen capturing which can be done directly over the screen (by means of a keyboard shortcut), fencing the desired area and sending it directly to the clipboard (you must change the configuration as by default it will capture into a paint-like tool included in PicPick), avoiding the two or three steps I was used to do before (Printscreen+Paste on Paint+Cutting&Copying…).

Color Palette and Color picker are also very useful if you have to define colors in your presentations or in developing tasks in order to configure stylesheets.

Although I haven’t tried in a real situation, the Whiteboard tool seems to be a very helpful tool when you need to explain or teach something over a running application in a computer.

PicPick is a free application for home users. The price for commercial use rounds 25$.

Let me know if this post has interested you, and if you know about a similar Opensource alternative, or at least a full freeware one, please: let us know!