Monday, March 29, 2010

Tutorial: How to Take a Screenshot

Being a seller on Etsy, I sometimes find my items in treasuries that other sellers make. These are always such beautiful collections that I want to take a screenshot, or screen capture, and share these with other people. In talking to a few of my friends the other day, I realized that some of them did not know how to do this. It's super easy. Watch!


Make sure you have the webpage that you want to capture centered on your screen. Look at your keyboard and find the 'Print Screen' button. This is usually somewhere near the top right, to the right of the F12 key.


In some systems, it works fine for you to just press the 'Print Screen' button, but with mine, I have to press 'Ctrl' and 'Print Screen' at the same time. Some systems require you to press 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' at the same time. Try one, test it with the next step or two, and if that doesn't work, try it the other way.


After you've captured your screen, you need to have somewhere to put it!
The easiest place is in your Paint. If you have Windows, you almost certainly have Paint. Look in your start menu.
Start Menu --> All Programs --> Accessories


Once Paint is open, you will see a blank screen. Perfect for pasting your screen capture!
Up at the top in Paint, you will see the Paint menu. Click on Edit and select Paste. Your screenshot will be pasted right there! If Paste is not an available option, that means that your screen was not captured. Try capturing it again with the step I listed above. Try 'Ctrl' and 'Print Screen' together or 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' together, and test it by checking the Edit menu in Paint.


Now that you've taken your screenshot and found somewhere to put it, you could be done! If you like using images as bitmaps or find that it doesn't matter to you either way, then just save your screenshot and you're done. 
If you want to crop or otherwise edit the photo, save it and reopen it using your photo editing software. When you save it after editing, it's best to save it as a jpeg. How to edit the photo is a tutorial for another day. I hope this post helped someone!



10 comments:

Dawn Doucette said...

Love the way you give instruction! Were you a teacher at any point in your life? This is a great tutorial for those that need help! Your guidance is superb!

Have a terrific week! P.S. Love the new blog look... blue sky = happiness! :)

waterwaif said...

Thanks for your kind words, Dawn!
I have only ever taught preschool. Does that count?

Gigi's Consignment Closet said...

Wonderful post. I have always wanted to know how to do this but was unable to understand it completely. This is perfect! Thanks :)

Heather Leavers said...

yay for screenshots, useful for so many reasons!

MAB from OtterCatHaus said...

I can never get the entire treasury page, only about 2/3 of it! I am not so techie. . .

waterwaif said...

MAB, use your scroll bar all the way on the right side of the screen to very, very slowly a few centimeters at a time move it until you've got the treasury centered on your computer screen.

If you can never see the whole thing at one time, then you have your monitor settings set too low. Those can be changed by: minimize everything, right click on your desktop, choose properties --> settings, and then play around with them until you find something that works!

Lady Steel said...

You helped me!

Laci Jo said...

AWESOME I have been wanting to know how to do that FOREVER but have known that it was so easy that I didn't wanna look stupid asking :D

thanks
Laci

PS: something I DO know: to make the screen bigger (or smaller) hold down "ctrl" and then "-" and that makes you zoom out, and "ctrl" and "+" make you zoom in! THE WHOLE web page!

BlackCatMima said...

Ahhhh - I never knew how to get the whole treasury either!
Hmm, now I need to be in a treasury so i could try it. :-)
Thanks! (Your blog looks awesome, btw.)

sallymandy said...

Thank you! Going to try it right now.

Barbara/Sallymandy
Blue Kimono Studio
www.bluekimonostudio.etsy.com