CAPTURING A SCREEN SHOT

CAPTURING A SCREEN SHOT

Capturing an image of a screen

On a PC: When you press ALT+PRINT SCREEN, the image is placed in the Clipboard (similar to the "copy" command). See the screenshot below as an example. If all you want is the active window, use the ALT+PRINT SCREEN combination.

Paste the image into a Word or PowerPoint or FrontPage document.

Important note: Do not expect to see anything happen when you press ALT+PRINT SCREEN. The image is simply copied into memory. When you click Paste, you will see the screenshot appear.

Resize (reduce) the image to the desired size by clicking inside the image and then pulling the corners ("handles"). (See Figure 1 below.) If you are pasting into a FrontPage document, after resizing the image, click the Resample button on the bottom image toolbar (next to the arrow). This will sharpen the image.

If you want to edit the image, simply paste it into your favorite bitmap editor (such as Microsoft Paintbrush), and trim the image any way you want.

On a MAC: Press SHIFT APPLE 4. Drag it off the screen to the desktop. Drag it onto desired page.

To take a picture of the whole screen, press Command-Shift-3.
To take a picture of part of the screen, press Command-Shift-4 then drag to select the area you want in the picture.
The above applies to Mac OS 8.5 and above.
Earlier OS versions only do the whole screen, Command-Shift-3.
The photo is saved to the Hard Disk with names like Picture 1, etc.

Capturing an image of a drop-down menu

Using ALT+PRINT SCREEN to capture drop-down menus may be a little tricky because the menu manager uses the ALT key. However, if you follow these simple steps, you can do it easily (see Figure 2 below for the result):

1. Make the program active, i.e. click on the drop-down menu you want to capture.

2. Hold down the ALT key. (Don't be surprised--the drop-down menu will disappear, temporarily.)

3. Without releasing ALT, press the keyboard accelerator key for the menu desired, e.g. F for the File drop-down menu or E for the Edit drop-down menu, etc.

4. Keeping ALT down, move the selection with the arrow keys.

5. Press the PRINT SCREEN key.

Note for laptop computers: Press the Fn key as well: Alt + keyboard accelerator key + Fn + Print Screen (prt sc)