I use nircmd.exe (as AutoHotkey macros) to capture the whole screen to a file:
Run, %comspec% /c C:\1\nircmd.exe cmdwait 1000 savescreenshot \6\~$currdate.yyyyMMdd$~$currtime.HHmmss$-scr.png,,Hide
or to the clipboard:
Run, %comspec% /c C:\1\nircmd.exe cmdwait 1000 savescreenshot *clipboard*,,Hide
Similarly, for just the active window:
Run, %comspec% /c C:\1\nircmd.exe cmdwait 1000 savescreenshotwin \6\~$currdate.yyyyMMdd$~$currtime.HHmmss$-win.png,,Hide
Run, %comspec% /c C:\1\nircmd.exe cmdwait 1000 savescreenshotwin *clipboard*,,Hide
The files end up in C:\6 (my choice) and have names like:
20141108181441-win.png
or
20151205182237-scr.png
These 4 operations are bound to some variants of Win+S(creen) and Win+C(urrent)
keys, which I must keep changing while waiting for Microsoft to clam down with
key assignments.
nircmd.exe is tiny and has no editing capabilities.
Screenshot Captor (stand-alone) is great for more complex captures and some editing.
I have thousands of captures in the C:\6\... area that I manage with ZTree and
https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/. I strongly recommend the latter,
since it's very configurable and can navigate through the directories as
smoothly as ZTree, using arrow keys.
This allows fast viewing, deleting, renaming, cropping, and some basic imaging effects.