Perfect Angle Photography

Sometimes it’s very useful to be able to capture an image of whatever is on your screen. For example, if you encounter an error or a web site is displaying unusually, it can be a lot easier to take a picture of what’s going on than trying to describe it. A picture of what’s on your screen is commonly called a “screen capture” or just “screenshot.” I’ll refer to it as the latter in this article.

Sometimes it’s very useful to be able to capture an image of whatever is on your screen. For example, if you encounter an error or a web site is displaying unusually, it can be a lot easier to take a picture of what’s going on than trying to describe it. A picture of what’s on your screen is commonly called a “screen capture” or just “screenshot.” I’ll refer to it as the latter in this article.Print Screen, but not reallyIn Windows, the simplest way to take a screenshot is to press the Print Screen (often abbreviated to “Prt Scr”) key on your keyboard. You’ll find it on the right side of your keyboard, above the Insert/Home/Page Up keys. Despite the label, in Windows this key doesn’t actually print anything. It simply copies the contents of your screen to the clipboard, the invisible area in your computer’s memory that holds things�like text, files, and pictures�while you Copy and Paste them. Once you’ve got a screenshot in the clipboard, you can now paste it into an image. You can use any image-editing program for this, but the obvious choice is Paint, Windows’ built-in drawing program. You can usually find Paint in the Start menu under Programs > Accessories.
Once you’ve pasted the screenshot into Paint you can edit, crop, or resize it there or you can go ahead and save it like you would any document. And that’s pretty much it.Oh, but here’s one more tip: If you want to take a screenshot of just the window you’re working on, instead of everything on your screen, all you have to do is hold down the Alt key when you press Print Screen.Something more advancedPrint Screen and Paint will take you a long way, but if you’re making a lot of screenshots or want a few more options, I recommend kicking it up a notch with FastStone Capture. FastStone Capture is a great freeware utility that’s a quick download and uses very little memory. When you run it it just sits in your system tray (on the taskbar next to the clock) and waits for you to call it. While FastStone Capture is running, you can still use the Print Screen key, but instead of copying a screenshot to the clipboard, FastStone will launch its own image editor. Its editor works a lot like Paint�click on the Draw button if you want to add lines or text to your screenshot�but it also has a few features that are especially useful for screenshots. The Comment button lets you quickly add a caption to the screenshot with the date and time (this is configurable, as are the font and colors), and the Edge button lets you add a decorative border and drop shadow, and even a watermark. You can also crop and resize your image here, which is good if you’re putting the screenshot online or want to crop out unnecessary information. When you’ve got the image you want you can click on the Email button to email it directly to a friend or colleague, or Save As to save it to your hard drive for later use.