I've recently been creating some documentation at work for one of our applications, and I've had a need to include a number of screen shots to illustrate some features. In the past, I would simply hit Print Screen, then open Paint and crop away until I had the screen shot I was looking for. As you can imagine, this isn't the most efficient way to create screen shots.

Luckily, David reminded me of one of the utilities that Scott Hanselman posted on his Ultimate Tools List named Cropper by Brian Scott. Cropper is extremely easy to use and does exactly what it was intended to do: easily create screen captures. The utility provides a resizable window that you place over the area you want to capture, then you double-click the window. A copy of the screen area is placed in a folder named Cropper, and that's all there is to it. If you need a screen capture utility, I recommend taking a look at Cropper.