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Puush is a small and simple application and web service which makes it easy to take and share screen grabs, as well as pictures and other files.
Before you can use the program you must create a puush account. It's nothing that you haven't done many times before with other services, though: give them an email address and password, click a "verify this address" link, choose a user name and you're done.
Launch puush, log in, and you're ready to begin sharing screen captures - which really is very quick and easy. To grab an image of your current window, for instance, you would just press Ctrl+Shift+2 (by default, anyway - all the hotkeys are user-configurable). No dialog appears, no options, there's nothing else to do: but in the background the program is taking the image and uploading it to your account. Within a few seconds an audio alert tells you that's complete, and puush will copy a short URL to your clipboard (of the form http://puu.sh/xxxxx) which you can use immediately to share the picture with others.
If grabbing an individual window doesn't suit your needs, you can also press hotkeys to capture a specific area, the entire desktop or the contents of your clipboard, as well as a specific file (they'll also each be uploaded to your account).
And if you're taking several grabs, then puush conveniently allows you to review some of them directly from its system tray menu. We found the program always listed our last five images and their time of capture; choosing one of these displayed an image thumbnail, and links to open it in our browser, copy its sharing link to the clipboard, or delete the image entirely.
The free edition of puush has its limits. Specifically: you can't share a file any larger than 20MB in size, and your online account can hold a maximum of 200MB. Paying an annual $15 for a Pro account lifts the individual file limit to 250MB, and provides unlimited account storage overall.
If you just need to share screen grabs or small files in a hurry, though, puush is a quick and easy way to make it happen, delivering plenty of functionality with the absolute minimum of system impact (the client used less than 1MB RAM on our test PC).
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Rating
Posted by: Mike Williams, 27 December 2012 16:02
Roger - thanks for your thoughts.
I quite agree that puush has significant limitations as a general screen grab tool. And if that was it did then a score of maybe 3 stars would perhaps have been more appropriate.
As I tried to say, though, I rated puush as I did more for its core functionality, sharing content with others. It's very easy to use, not restricted to just images, and is the most lightweight tool of its kind I've ever seen, while the limitations you're talking about don't affect the sharing side, so I think that 4.5 star score is well deserved overall.
Posted by: Roger, 21 December 2012 18:55
It took me a bit of playing at each step to catch on, but once there it appears to be a quick way to pass along screenshots in certain circumstances. Have to experiment to see how many of the latter, such pasting into forums. Two things I don't like, and make it much less useful to me, are the lack of a Save As function for naming the file on my computer and the inability to choose the save format (settings give choice of either png, or png unless jpg is smaller). At minimum, that means I still have to go into my documents folder and edit the names and maybe change the format; i.e., a series of files named "ss (2012-12-21 at 11.13.51)" are useless to me. Online, it's also not clear to me what the gallery is and how to use it. Someone asked 9 months ago and still hasn't been answered. The help facility is basically nonexistent and, given the time since release and the fact that it wouldn't take much, I have to wonder if the authors even care. At this point, puush feels more like someone's personal project, a very good idea in need of some direction to reach prime time. All of which makes me wonder about Download Crew's giving it 4-1/2 stars.