Taking Screenshots: A Quick Guide

[David]

Taking screenshots can be very useful on the forum: Helping to share your benchmarks with other members; Showing that error message you cant understand; or showing off your latest desktop wallpaper.

Here is a brief guide on taking screenshots.

Whole Screen
Note: Most people use 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 or greater as their desktop resolution. However, its best to reduce any screenshots you take, to 800x600 or smaller. This means screenshots do not break the tables or cause other problems with webpages when viewed on the forums. Where possible, reducing screenshots to 640x480 is ideal. Also if taking a screenshot of multiple programs it can help if you crop out only the relevant parts you wish to include in the screenshot. Reducing to 640x480 is advised unless there are things that arent clear enough at 640x480.

Arrange the screen with the programs/areas you want to take a screenshot of fully visible. Then press the Print Screen button on your keyboard (also labelled as Sys Rq on many systems).

Open up a graphics package of your choice, such as Photoshop or Paint or Paintshop Pro. I will go through how to do it in photoshop. In photoshop you want to do File | New and you will see a dialog box.

As you can see it already knows to make an image 1024x768 as this is my desktop resolution. Hit OK and you are presented with a large empty box. Then do Edit | Paste. The screenshot will be pasted into the empty box. Last thing we need to do is resize it. Go to Image | Image Size and you will see a little box pop up.

Its pretty self explanatory - enter the size you want to make the screenshot. Its set so that if you enter 800 in the top box, it automatically pops 600 in the bottom box. This avoids making the image look distorted. (Note: If you dont want it to do this for whatever reason, then untick the Constrain Proportions box.)

Now the final step is to save it. I would recommend JPEG or PNG format for saving images (PNG tends to make less of a mess of text than JPEG can do at higher compression ratios). Do File | Save As, choose a format from the bottom box and enter the file name in the top one. Hit save and you are done.


One Program

Make sure the program you want a screenshot of is currently selected and has focus. Then do Alt+Print Screen. Again, open up the graphics program and do Edit|Paste. Save as a file.

For example, taking a screenshot of the system properties window. Right click on My Computer and Select Properties (Or hold down the Windows Key and Press Pause/Break). Hold down Alt and hit Print Screen.
Open Photoshop and select File | New again. Magically it knows what size to make the image .

Then do Edit | Paste again. If the image is a bit too big, resize it. As a rule of thumb, try to make sure the longest edge is 800 pixels at most, and 640 or less if possible. File | Save to save it.


The Final Step: Getting your pics on the web

Now you have the screenshots on your PC, you need to get them onto the internet

There are three main ways to do this:

• Use the vB attach image option when you post. This is quick and easy but means that all your images appear at the bottom of the post. Image size limit is 640x640.
• Use your own webspace - upload your images and then link to them using the following vBcode:
  
  
  This is a bit more time consuming but means you can insert pics whereever you want to in your post.
• Use a free image host - such as ImageShack.us, Cryo-Laboratory, or Photo Bucket - you simply use their webpage to upload a file to their site, and they host it for you. ImageShack.us can even give you the relevant vbcode to link to the pic with!