Easy Nonchalant Techniques for Impressive Screenshots

Screenshots are much more fun than just plain text they can make things easier to understand for your potential audience and the benefits of explaining something using an image is well-known.

There are several ways in which this can be achieved but I will talk about my 2 favourite methods, which also happen to be the quickest and easiest

The simplest way is to use standard windows tools that have been included with every version of windows since Win 95

Full Screen Screenshot

Press the Print Screen button on your keyboard this can usually be found hiding between F12 and Scroll Lock keys. On some Laptops you may need to press the "Fn" Or Function Key to access the Print Screen Function. This will then be copied to the Windows Clipboard

One Window Screenshot

To take a Screenshot of One Window you must make sure, that the window is active. That means that it should in front of all other Window's.

Hold the "ALT" Key and then press the Print Screen Key

This will then be copied to the Windows Clipboard

Now to Get That Screenshot of the Clipboard

Again the easiest way to do this is to use standard Windows tools like Paint but you can also use any image editor these include programs like, Adobe Photoshop, Gimp and Picasa, But there are many more it's just really personal choice.

To find Paint within Windows. Click "Start", "All Program's", "Accessories" and then Paint.

How to Paste the Screenshot

Open the "Select Tool" from the Menu Bar at the top. Then choose the rectangular option. Right Click on the Canvas area within paint. And Select "Paste". Your Screenshot will now appear.

A Screenshot can also be pasted into a Word document or an email. You just right Click on any page you are preparing and select "Paste"

This only works on Windows XP and earlier. You can open the edit menu and select "Paste" To "Paste"

Keyboard Short cut Hold down "Ctrl" and Press" V" to Paste

Don't forget to save your document or image. To do this simply go file, then select "Save As"

You can save Screenshots as any image file format you wish. For Example: jpg, gif, tiff and PNG if you intend to use your Screenshot on a Website I would suggest saving your Screenshot as a gif file as this format generally results in the smallest possible file size, and keeping your Website images to a reasonable size is vital when it comes to page loading times. Finally taking a Screenshot of a bitmap image will result in a huge file size.

Taking Stunning Screen Shots Using Windows Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool in Microsoft Window's 7 can be found here. Start/All Programs/Accessories/Snipping Tool.

Please Note: Windows Snipping Tool Is Only Included With the following Editions of Microsoft Windows. Windows Vista, Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions only)

Click on the New Box down Arrow as shown and choose from

Free Form Snip

Rectangular Snip

Window Snip

Full Screen Snip

Rectangular Snip

Free Form Snip is where you trace any shape you wish to capture it as a Snip/Screenshot

Full Page Snip Is exactly that any page that displays on your desktop can be captured or snipped

How to Take a Screenshot/Snip of a Short cut Menu or the Start Menu.

Open the snipping tool from the start menu as shown above

Press Esc, and then open the menu that you want to capture.

Press Ctrl+PrtScn.

Click the arrow next to the new button, select Free-Form Snip, Rectangular Snip, Window Snip, or Full-screen Snip from the list, and then select the area of your screen that you want to capture.

Then Just "Save As" and you're all done

There are a number of options that can be changed in the Snipping Tool. Clicking on the Options button on the toolbar presents the user with two groups of options:

Hide instruction text: hides the instructional text displayed by Snipping Tool.

Always copy snips to the Clipboard: Places the snipped image on the clipboard, allowing it to be pasted into another program such as a word processor.

Include URL below snips (HTML only) - If a snip is taken of an Internet Explorer page and saved as a single HTML or MHT file, the URL of the page will be displayed below the snip.

Prompt to save snips before exiting - If a snip has been taken but not saved, then on exit the user will be prompted to save the snip.

Show screen overlay when Snipping Tool is active - When the Snipping Tool is active a transparent white overlay will be displayed across the screen; when making a snip, the snip select is shown without the white overlay.

Ink colour - Sets the colour of the Ink used when drawing on a snip.

Show the selection ink after snips are captured - When checked, a coloured selection border is shown around the snip.

After a snip has been captured a few more options become available: from the tools menu the user can select Pen and then customize... Here a custom pen can be created with the option to change the Colour, Thickness, and the Tip of the pen. A highlighter option is also available.

My Tips for Stress Free Screenshots

Avoid Resizing when you resize a Screenshot image, it tends to become fuzzy and text will be hard to read.

Crop Images this way you eliminate things you don't really want to show. Use the [ALT] + [PrtScrn] key combination to capture only the current window, and then crop further.

Annotate With annotating I mean highlighting key elements in your Screenshot, such as by pointing an arrow to a certain place, circling a button, or highlighting text.

Note When Snipping Tool is open; a white overlay appears on your screen until you capture a snip. To turn off the overlay, open Snipping Tool, and then click Options. In the Snipping Tool Options dialogue box, clear the Show screen overlay when Snipping Tool is active check box, and then click OK.

By Graham Drew.

Sunday April 29th 2012.

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