Read on about the most important changes…

Redo Last Screenshot

Are you tired of selecting the same region of your screen several times until you have the perfect screenshot? Do you want to capture the same window multiple times to create a step-by-step guide?

In this case you will love Shutter’s new ‘Redo last screenshot’ feature. It allows you to redo the last screenshot without doing a selection again.

You can even redo every single screenshot in your session – easy isn’t it?

Pixelize

You want to hide private content from your screenshots? Check out the new Pixelize tool…

New Callout Shapes

We have added some nice callout shapes to the DrawingTool. Due to the fact that these files are in SVG format they can nicely be resized – here are some examples:

PDF + SVG Export

Shutter now uses cairo to render PDF and SVG documents. What does this mean to you? It allows you to export your current drawing to SVG format that can be edited with any vector graphics program, e.g. Inkscape. Additionally  PDF Export is integrated in the main program now and can be launched directly from the File menu.

Copy URL To Clipboard (FTP Upload)

When uploading into a FTP server’s directory that is accessible via HTTP you can now configure the website’s URL. This URL will be copied to clipboard when uploading. You can now use the URL to view your screenshot in your favorite browser or paste it into a web-forum etc..

Built-In Notifications

This version introduces a built-in notification system. Systemwide notification systems like Ubuntu’s Notify-OSD are not primarily designed to be used by in the way we want to use it and do have some limitations, e.g. you can not close the notifications immediately, that are critical in the context of taking screenshots.

The built-in system allows us to use the messages in a more flexible way. There are already some more features planned for future version, e.g. a button to cancel a running countdown. Users with lean desktop configurations where no notification daemon is installed, e.g. pure fluxbox, can now use the built-in system as well.

Please note that you can still use the system’s notification system if you wish. There is a setting in the preferences.

Detailed changelog is available here.

Enjoy the update!

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