Wide's World
Screen Captures
by
Widearea
Capture your desktop
In many instances you may want to capture the contents of your desktop. This may be well known to many, but this week we will look at the basics of creating a screen grab of any action or event that happens on your desktop.
Instant photography
1. It is possible to capture any event on your desktop. In this example we will simply take a screenshot of a web page in our browser. Launch your browser and go to any website of which you wish to create a screen capture.
2. In Windows simply press the Print Screen or Prnt Scrn key found at the upper right of your keyboard. This captures the entire contents of your monitor's display. The image file created will match the resolution of your monitor. To capture only the active window (in this case the opened web page in our browser), simply press Alt + Prnt Scrn. On a Mac, press Command + Shift + 3. This will capture the entire contents of your monitor at the esolution to which your monitor is set.
3. Launch any paint program or image editor. Note that most any image editing or paint program will work.
4. In the paint/image editing program, select File -> New.
5. With the new document created, select Edit -> Paste.
6. Depending on the type of capture method you used, you can either save your work or crop or resize the screen capture as needed for your specific application.
7. Save your work and optimize your screen shot as necessary.
