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Hack 77 Top Screenshot Tips

Capture any XP screen or portion of a screen
and control the file format and output using these screen-capture
tips.

Capturing
good screenshots in XP takes a bit of work. If all you want to do is
capture a screen for later reference, and don't care
about the file format of the capture, and don't need
to capture the cursor or only part of the screen, you can use
XP's built-in capture capabilities. But if you need
to create documentation, are a professional writer, an artist, or are
a student preparing a term paper and need to get great-looking
screenshots, you'll have to use a third-party
program.

These screen-capture tips will help you capture just about anything
you want, using built-in or third-party tools.

8.6.1 Built-In Screen Capture

XP comes with a built-in
capability for capturing screenshots, though it's
about as basic as screenshot capture gets. To
capture an entire screen, press the
Print Scrn button. To capture only the active screen, press Alt-Print
Scrn.

Pressing
those keys captures the screen to the
Clipboard[Hack #73], but
you'll have to paste the screen into a

graphics program in order
to save it. Use your favorite graphics program, such as Paint Shop
Pro [Hack #86], or use
XP's built-in Paint program by
choosing Start All Programs Accessories
Paint. Paste in the graphic, and then choose a format for
saving it.

If you have
Microsoft Office, a
better bet than Paint is pasting the screen into Microsoft Photo
Editor (Start Programs Microsoft Office Tools
Microsoft Photo Editor). (Microsoft Photo Editor
doesn't come with all versions of Office, or might
not be installed by default, so it might not be available on yours.)
It offers more control over
file formats
when you save the screenshot. For example, you'll be
able to decide on the amount of compression to use on JPEG files, and
you can choose among several graphics color depths and palettes. When
you save a file, after you choose the format, click on the More
button, and you'll get options for saving in that
file format, as shown Figure 8-12. Of course, a
graphics program like Paint Shop Pro offers even more options.

Figure 8-12. Saving screen captures with Microsoft Photo Editor

8.6.2 SnagIt

XP's built-in
capture tool, while effective, has several drawbacks. It
won't capture the
cursor or portions of the screen,
for example. To do that and more, get the ultimate screen capture
tool, SnagIt from TechSmith (http://www.snagit.com). It's
shareware and free to try, but it costs $39.95 if you decide to keep
it. In addition to letting you capture the cursor and any portion of
a screen, it will capture an entire scrollable areasuch as a
scrolling web pagegives you a wide variety of options for
customizing file formats, and it will capture a screen and send it to
the printer or a web page.

First, choose what you want to
capturethe entire screen, the active window, a portion of the
window and so on. Also, configure whether to capture the cursor.
Figure 8-13 shows you the SnagIt menu options for
capturing a screen.

Figure 8-13. SnagIt screen-capture options

Next, set up the screen you want to capture and press
SnagIt's hot key for screen capture. (The default is
Ctrl-Shift-P, but you can change it.) If you've
chosen to capture an area of the screen, you'll be
able to define it using SnagIt's capture tools. If
you've chosen the option of capturing a screen that
scrolls, click on the scroll bar of the screen. Once you have the
area you want, you get a preview of the screen, as shown in Figure 8-14. You can zoom in and out on any area of the
screen to make sure it's what you want. When you
decide the screen is what you want, click Finish, select a file
format, name, and location, and you're done. To
customize your graphics
formatfor example, to choose JPEG compression or change the
color depthclick on the Options button that appears when you
save a file, and make your choice.

Figure 8-14. Previewing your screenshot with SnagIt

8.6.3 See Also

If you want to capture onscreen actions such as mouse movements, menu
choices, and anything else you do on your PC, use the free CamStudio
(http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/), which
will record all your actions and save it as a video file in either
Windows .avi video format or Flash
.swf format.