Clipboard Image Publisher

What: Clipboard Image Publisher is software program written in Java that enables the user to publish print screen images quickly.

Why: I send emails with print screen images all the time in my current email client Mozilla Thunderbird. It is really easy. Hit the Print Screen button and hit Control-V into the email body. I am using Gmail more and Thunderbird less. To insert a screen print in Gmail you paste it from the clipboard into to an image program like MS Paint or Gimp, save it to a file and add it to your Gmail message as an attachement. Or, you can publish the screen print image to a public web site, pull up that image in your browser and then drag it to your Gmail message. I prefer the later.

How: The user holds down the Alt key and hits the print screen key. The operating system sends an image of the current window to the system clipboard. When the user presses the Publish button in Clipboard Image Publisher it saves the image to the local hard drive in a temporary file. It then sends that file to a servlet hosted at my website patrickarchibald.com. The program then launches the default web browser to display the published image. The user can drag and drop the link into a Gmail message. There is also an Edit button. Click this to edit the image prior to publishing it. The program will launch whatever program you have assigned to .png files. I have Gimp assigned on my system. To change what program is assigned to .png files edit File Types in Windows Explorer.

Requirements: The program is written Java. You will need Java 1.4 or better to install and run it. It has been tested on Windows XP Professional and Windows Media Center Edition. It will not run properly on non-Windows systems. Other operating systems handle the clipboard differently and launching programs differently.

Limitations: Each screen shot must be 500,000 bytes or less. No more than 10 images published per IP address per day are allowed. Depending on my disk usage the images may be deleted after 7 days.

Screen shot:

Screencast: View the screencast movie of how to send a print screen image in Gmail.

Source code: Clipboard Image Publisher open source hosted on Google Projects

Download, install, and run: