Pluck vs Lightshot: Screenshot Tools Compared

Lightshot and Pluck both make screenshots easy, but they work very differently. Lightshot is a general-purpose screen capture tool. Pluck is specifically designed for beautiful web element screenshots.

How they work

Lightshot: Press the hotkey, draw a rectangle around anything on your screen, annotate if needed, upload to prntscr.com or save locally.

Pluck: Activate the extension, click on any element on a web page, get a styled screenshot with padding and background automatically applied.

Key differences

Capture method

Lightshot uses traditional area selection - you draw a box around what you want. This works anywhere on your screen (with the desktop app) but requires precise selection and often manual cropping afterward.

Pluck uses element detection. It understands the structure of web pages and captures complete elements - a card, a tweet, a navigation bar - with pixel-perfect boundaries.

Output quality

Lightshot gives you exactly what you captured - raw pixels. Need padding? Add it yourself. Want a background? Open an editor.

Pluck outputs finished images. It automatically adds padding, applies a background color you choose, and sizes the result appropriately.

Privacy

Lightshot’s default workflow uploads screenshots to prntscr.com, a public image host. Your screenshots are accessible via a short URL that can be guessed.

Pluck keeps everything local. Screenshots go to your clipboard or downloads folder - never to external servers.

Side-by-side

Feature	Pluck	Lightshot
Capture type	Web elements	Screen area
Auto-styling	Yes	No
Annotations	No	Yes
Cloud upload	No	Yes (default)
Desktop app	No	Yes
Privacy	Local only	Cloud-based

Who should use each

Pluck is for you if:

• You screenshot web content for social media
• You want professional-looking results without editing
• You value privacy over cloud convenience
• You’re tired of cropping and adding backgrounds manually

Lightshot is for you if:

• You need to capture anything on screen, not just web pages
• You want quick annotation tools (arrows, text, boxes)
• You prefer instant sharing via short URLs
• You need a desktop app for non-browser screenshots

The bottom line

Lightshot is a Swiss Army knife - it does many things adequately. Pluck is a precision tool - it does one thing exceptionally well.

If you’re capturing web elements for sharing or documentation, Pluck produces better results faster. If you need general screen capture with annotations, stick with Lightshot.