Section 76. Capture a Screenshot

76. Capture a Screenshot

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Just jump right in.


SEE ALSO

77 Convert Between Image Formats


If you need to capture a screen from your PC and use it on a web page, XP includes only a very primitive, awkward tool. To do it in XP, first press Shift+Print Scrn . That action captures the entire screen to the Windows XP Clipboard. Then you can open a graphics program such as Paint. (To open Paint, click the Start button, choose All Programs, Accessories, Paint .) When Paint opens, paste the screen from the Clipboard into it by choosing Edit, Paste from the menu. Now that the screen is in Paint, you can save it.

There are several problems with this process, though. When you save a screen this way, you can only save the entire screenyou can't save a portion of one. You also don't get a wide range of graphics formats to which you can save. And the whole thing is very awkward and kludgy.

76. Capture a Screenshot


There's a better way. Use downloadable software to save screens. The best for the purpose is SnagIt, as you'll see in this task.

1.
Download and Install SnagIt

Go to www.snagit.com and click the Download button at the top of the page. Follow the instructions for downloading and installing the program.

NOTE

SnagIt is shareware, which means that you can try it out for free, but if you continue to use the program, you're expected to pay $39.95. You can pay directly on the website.

2.
Run SnagIt and Choose Your Profile

Double-click the SnagIt icon on the desktop, or choose it from the Start, All Programs menu. When SnagIt runs, you'll see a list of what the program calls Basic Capture Profiles . Each profile allows you to do a different kind of screen capture. For example, the first one, A Region to File , lets you capture a portion of a screen and then save it as a file in a wide variety of graphics formats. The Entire Screen profile captures your entire screen to a file.

To find out the details about a profile, click it and look in the Capture Settings area on the right side of the screen for information about that profile. You'll see the following information for each profile:

NOTE

A particularly useful feature of SnagIt is its capability to specify a delay time before the screen is captured (for example, if you want to arrange windows or menus before the screen is captured). To use it, click the Timer Setup icon (it looks like a stopwatch) at the bottom of the right side of the screen and fill in the form.

  • Hotkey The key combination you press to activate that particular profile. For a start, you use the same hotkey for each profile. To choose which profile to use when you press that hotkey, you first click the profile to highlight it. When you press that hotkey, you'll capture a screen using that profile. To capture a screen with a different profile, open SnagIt, highlight a different profile, and then press the hotkey. You can instead assign different hotkeys to different profiles. To assign a hotkey to a profile, right-click a profile, select Set Hotkey from the context menu, press the hotkey combination you want to use, and click OK .

  • Mode This setting determines whether you'll capture the image from the screen, the text from the screen, a video of several screens, or a website.

  • Input This setting determines what portion of the screen you'll capture: for example, the entire screen, only the currently active window, a rectangular portion of the screen, and so on.

  • Output This setting determines what happens when you capture the screendo you send it to the printer, for example, or capture it as a file. If you do capture it as a file, you can set which file format the capture should be in.

  • Filters This option lets you apply a kind of filter to the screen capturefor example, you can change its resolution, add a border to it, add special effects to its edges (such as waves and fades), and so on.

  • Options Here you can choose your final options for the screenshot, such as whether to include the mouse pointer, and whether you should view your screenshot in a preview window before you save it.

After you look through the profiles, choose the one you want to use and then minimize the SnagIt window by clicking the Minimize button in the upper-right corner of the title bar.

3.
Take the Screenshot

Arrange the screen in whatever manner constitutes the screenshot you want to capture (for example, a website). Press the SnagIt hotkey, which by default is Ctrl+Shift+P . If you've chosen to capture an entire screen or the current window, the SnagIt Capture Preview window appears, letting you preview your file. If you want to save the capture, click the Finish (File) button in the toolbar at the top of the window, navigate to the place on your hard disk where you want to save the file, give the file a filename, and click Save .

If you've chosen an option such as capturing a portion of the screen, a cropping tool appears, letting you define the portion of the screen you want to capture. After you stop dragging the area to crop, the Capture Preview window appears. Save the screenshot as explained in the previous paragraph.

4.
Create a New Profile

To create a new profile, go back to the main SnagIt screen (the one that lists all the profiles). Click the Add New Profile Wizard button at the bottom of the list. A wizard runs, first asking you what type of capture mode you want to use. Make your selection and click Next . The wizard will walk you through every step of choosing all the options for a new profilethe options described in step 2 of this task.

In the final step, you'll be asked to name the profile and to choose a hotkey for it. Make sure that you choose a hotkey that isn't used by any other program or by Windows XP. Don't forget to give the profile a descriptive name , as well.

5.
Use Your New Profile

To use your new profile, minimize the SnagIt window (click the Minimize button in the upper-right corner of the title bar) and go to the screen you want to capture. Press the hotkey you've defined for your new profile, and use SnagIt as outlined earlier in this task.

6.
Use Your Screenshot

After you've saved your screenshot, you can use it as you would any other graphics file; for example, in a newsletter, in a report in a Word document, to send as an email attachment, and so on.



Sams Teach Yourself Creating Web Pages All in One
Sams Teach Yourself Creating Web Pages All in One
ISBN: 0672326906
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 276

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