Sigh. I guess it was bound to happen. I found a low-cost screen capture tool that competes with Jing, which is one of my all-time favorites.

FastStone Screen Capture comes in as an unobtrusive toolbar. You can capture windows, the full screen, a scrolling screen and a video with audio (see my sample below — I don’t think the audio recording is as good as Jing). In addition, when you capture something, you get a whole host of editing options to add a little more flair and details — Jing simply lets you annotate and draw arrows. And FastStone has a couple of extra handy tools like a screen magnifier plus a color picker (similar to another Beth Favorite, Pixie).

FastStone has a number of ways to export your capture, but I still prefer Jing’s integration with Screencast.com, which allows you to simply toss your capture online into your library without having to actually upload it.

Overall, I give FastStone an A- and still give Jing an A. But they’re both pretty darn cool and are infinitely better than your “Print Screen” Button.

FastStone Screen Capture – The Best Screen Capture Software.

Now this is handy! Download iSpring Free, a little PowerPoint add-in to convert your PowerPoint presentation into Flash with a push of a button. Here’s a sample with my last presentation…. Warning… as a stand-alone without audio, it’s insanely boring. But the cool thing is it became a Flash movie in about a minute.

iSpring Free | Free PowerPoint to Flash Converter.

Wow! Sketch My Photo is the best tool I’ve seen for converting a photo into a pencil sketch. It’s worlds better than applying filters in your regular photo editor (ever try a neon filter? What the heck is that?)

I uploaded my Twitter avatar, and Sketch My Photo came up with this perfect rendition. Saving your photo in a pretty good resolution is free. It’s $5.95 to upgrade to a nicer version.

Sketch My Photo – Free instant photo to pencil sketch conversion.

ImageChef lets you create quick custom photos with a ton of free templates. I love when I can make a clever piece of art happen within minutes rather than having to mess with a custom photo for hours.  I created this in about 90 seconds, and a third of that was coming up with the book title.

This one took me even less time.

It’s free to play, and if you register, you can save or email your creations. A year’s worth of enhanced features is $80, or $10 a month.

ImageChef – Customize Photos, Clip Art.

I discovered this site about an hour ago, and I just spent way too much time experimenting with the art generation tool to create a cool example for this post (yep, that’s it below).

Mutapic is addicting. You choose two icon pictures, press the Generate button and Mutapic morphs the two together to create icons. Kind of. Mine were mostly ugly, but I had lots of fun experimenting.

Mutapic is free to play, but if you want to save anything, you need to upgrade for $30 and download the software. Not bad if you need these things on a regular basis, and you can then use your own photos to create your art.

Mutapic.