As Shutter has been touted as an apparent alternative to many Windows solutions (even though that’s not the original intent), it would be great if you people could add your support behind it by “liking” on its webpage. The website supports OpenID login, so registration isn’t a problem!

http://alternativeto.net/desktop/shutter/

Thanks again

Your favorite screenshot program is already prepared for it – Shutter is available in our PPA for the Ubuntu Koala, and works great on it.

Enjoy!

Undo / Redo support in the editor

Shutters screenshot editor now features undo capability – making it much more forgiving against accidents, and allowing for easier experimentation. This also makes it a rather complete screenshot-oriented image editor, and as far as we know, the first of its kind on Linux

New tools in the editor

The editor also received several useful tools – arrow shape, highlighter, numbered tags, crop tool, and a resizable canvas.

The arrow is a tool of it’s own now – previously it was an image, which wasn’t convenient to access frequently and had some complications when using. Now it’s available on the left toolbar, and functions similarly to the line too.

The highlighter tool, as it’s name implies, is useful for highlighting. While a pencil tool with a large line width, some transparency and a yellow color does the same job, it was inconvenient to switch the color setup from the standard to the ‘highlighting’ mode and back. Now the highlighter is a tool of it’s own, with a nice cursor, making it easier and faster to highlight. Big thanks to Richard Querin of the Inkscape Screencasters fame for providing us with the nice highlighter icon.

Numbered tags – ah, what Shutter was made originally for – aiding in documentation process. Numbered tags stamp a number (that’s auto-incremented each time you use it) on the screenshot, allowing you to clearly detail the steps needed to take in a graphical interface.

Crop tool allows you to crop your screenshot ala advanced selection tool for screen capture. You draw a box of the area you’d like to leave, crop, and everything outside of the box is removed with the canvas auto-sized to the new dimensions.

The canvas is now resizable – allowing you to extend it’s dimensions beyond the original screenshot resolution for more stuff, or sizing it down for less stuff. Do as you please! You are the king/queen.

Besides that, the editor also received various improvements like a built-in fullscreen mode and an option to clear all the objects you’ve added. The ability open your recently used files has been added to the main window as well.

New plugins

That’s right! Now you’ve got more neat effects to apply to your screenshots.

Watermark – quite a common function. Add your copyrights, location, project website on your screenshot – now without complex pixel manipulation and within Shutter.

Reflection – applies a fading reflection at the bottom of the image, giving it a stylish look.

Distortion adds the “fish eye” effect by bulging out the middle of the image.

3d rotate – allows you to rotate the image on all three (x, y, z) axis in 3d. Add a new depth to your screenshots!

As with everything else, bugs were fixed and we’re already planning for the next version, 0.85. We hope you enjoy this release!

Detailed changelog is available here.

why was it started

As Mario started to work in the quality assurance department of a local IT-company, he started looking for some a neat screenshot application – because there is a lot of documentation and bug tracking work to be done where screenshots are essential.

There were some apps like ksnapshot, gnome-screenshot etc. but they all focus on a single screenshot; no editing features, no session, no uploading, no nice effects etc. So he started to develop Shutter (formerly gscrot) with these features and goals in mind.

timeline of the project

The plugins system was one of the first major features that were implemented. It was now possible to add effects like drop shadows, polaroid etc. to the screenshots. Most of these plugins are still available in the latest version of Shutter.

ubuntu-pics.de was the first image hoster that was supported by the new upload functionality added to Shutter in the following weeks.

Shutter was a little frontend for scrot at first but it moved very fast and while there were more and more feature requests scrot was dropped and a standalone backend was implemented. This step made it possible to add advanced features like the zoom-window, window selection by name and last but not least the advanced selection tool.

Another milestone is the drawing tool that was requested by so many users and was introduced in the 0.6x series of Shutter. There was no need to start image manipulation tools like The Gimp after capturing a screenshot anymore just if you wanted to highlight some thing or add arbitrary graphics to your image.

pics of the first release

One of the very first implementations. Scrot console parameters turned into graphical switches

The first release (still named XScrot - the very first code name).

That’s all!  Now you know a bit more about Shutter. Enjoy it

Upload your Shutter screenshots to Flickr

This is the second and last release in the 0.70.x release series; the next 0.80 release will be focusing on improving the drawing tool – including an “Undo” feature, double-clicking to update items, a crop tool and instant-apply for property changes (for example, line width, color, and etc. will be updated as soon as you set a new option – this allows real-time “preview”).

If you’ve added the Shutter Ubuntu repository, you’ll be notified about an update automatically – otherwise, see our downloads page for ArchLinux, Fedora, Mandriva, Mepis packages and the source code.

Full changelog:

  * fixed bugs
    -- LP: #339139
       [Shutter selects incorrect target window]
    -- LP: #340855 + LP: #340864
       [fixed save-as function]
    -- LP: #340856
       [main window is partly visible on screenshots]
    -- LP: #340990
       [Shutter crashes when xserver grab fails]
    -- LP: #341459
       [Ctrl+ + doesn't zoom in drawing area]
    -- LP: #347821
       [decode filesize properly]
  * updated translations

If you’ve subscribed to the Ubuntu repository, you’ll be prompted about an update being available automatically – otherwise, check the downloads page for individual packages. Maintainers of other distributions have been notified, so updates for that will be available soon.

Here is the list of issued fixed:

    -- LP: #260771
       [Detect 'window-manager-changed' event]
    -- LP: #328654
       [Weird paths after uploading]
    -- LP: #338829
       [Uploading to imageshack is broken]
    -- LP: #338990
       [Open with dialog freezes shutter and desktop]
    -- LP: #340253
       [Capture Website creates two files]
    -- LP: #340459
       [Use fallback icons if icon does not exist]

As always, if you’ve found some issue, let us know!

This is the first release of Shutter as it is – we’ve just renamed it from GScrot. So you’ll now find it called Shutter inder Applications ▸ Accessories, along with a nicer new logo (thanks to Pascal Grochol for the design).

The software has been improved and streamlined, as well as the name – we think “shutter” more accurately relates to what you’ll be doing alongside the software itself. The new software can be downloaded pretty quickly, so if you’re on an o2 broadband line you’ll be fine. Feel free to give us any feedback – there’s a lot of new things happening in this version, which we’ll explain more about now.

Major updates in this release are printing support, support for a whole lot of formats to save pictures in, support for watching changes to files (open the screenshot externally in gimp, save it – and shutter updates its copy), integration with GVFS (you can upload sites that you’ve connected to via Places ▸ Connect), better recognition for programs that can open a picture, faster thumbnail creation, and improved dialogs!

Digg this too!

Shutter 0.70!

As if that weren’t enough, here is the full changelog detailing every item updated:

  * General changes
    -- Rebranding from GScrot to Shutter
    -- Exports to and opens all file formats supported by gdk-pixbuf
    -- Added native printing support (instead of gtklp)
    -- Watch opened files via GnomeVFS File Monitor to monitor changes
    -- Integration of GNOME Virtual File System and
       GNOME authentication manager (LP: #310780)
    -- Respect non-rectangular windows (XSHAPE)
       when using metacity (LP: #260771)
    -- Use themeable icons wherever its is possible
    -- Use systemwide MIME Information instead of config file
    -- Move screenshots to trash instead of deleting them (LP: #313003)
    -- Faster thumbail creation and caching
       (improves gui startup when a lot of files are in last session)
    -- Improved Dialogs (e.g. Settings Dialog)
    -- Show context menu for each file in session tab (right click)
  * Gui improvements
    Show current profile in statusbar (LP: #279271)
    Second toolbar removed (LP: #311626)
    Progress bars (LP: #310299)
    -- LP: #311627
    -- LP: #312966
    -- LP: #313346
    -- LP: #326758
  * Drawing Tool
    Scale uniformly (LP: #310708)
    Added standard actions (copy, cut, paste, delete) (LP: #313343)
    Added censor tool to hide private data (LP: #317659)
    -- LP: #310717
    -- LP: #310721
    -- LP: #311574
    -- LP: #311576
    -- LP: #311577
    -- LP: #311580
  * Miscellaneous
    Shutter shows up in GNOME add/remove (LP: #322388)
    Repository is not signed (thanks to the LP Team) (LP: #312681)
  * Plugins
    New hard shadow plugin (thanks to Tualatrix) (LP: #331914)
  * Fixed bugs
    -- LP: #303090
    -- LP: #313761
    -- LP: #316917
    -- LP: #336120
    -- LP: #336126
    -- LP: #336121
    -- LP: #336118
    -- LP: #336133
    -- LP: #336124
  * updated translations

About Shutter:

Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot program. You can take a screenshot
of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website -
apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then
upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

###

If you’ve been subscribed to our PPA, then you’ll automatically be notified of an upgrade. Otherwise, you can download an updated version of Shutter here, which will replace GScrot. Instead of GScrot in Applications→Accessories, you’ll now see Shutter

Thanks to the community at ubuntuforums.org for contributing to the name brainstorming, and especially damis648 for coming up with the name.