TIP #100 – Creating Screen Shots in Mac and Windows
There may be times when you want to take a picture of the computer screen to insert in printed handouts, an email or a web page. This can easily be done in Windows and Mac. In Mac OSX you can even take screen shots of only a portion of the screen, if desired. Below are the steps for creating a screen capture:
Windows
1. When you have the desired content visible on the screen, press the Print Screen (or Prt Sc) button on your keyboard. A picture will be taken of the entire screen. This screen image file is now on the Clipboard and can be pasted into an image editing program such as Picture It! or Photoshop Elements.
2. To edit the image, open your image editing software and edit – paste the graphic into it. You can then use the program’s cropping tool to cut away parts of the image that you don’t want. You may also want to use the Resize command to make the image smaller.
3. Save the image as a GIF or JPEG file, especially if you are going to use it on a Web page. The image may now be inserted into a MS Word document, a MS PowerPoint presentation or any other program that accepts GIF and JPEG image files.
Macintosh (OS X)
1. When you have the desired content visible on the screen, press Shift+Command+4 on the keyboard. Your cursor will change to a crosshair.
2. Click in the upper left corner of your screen capture area and hold the cursor, dragging it down and to the right until you have outlined the desired part of the screen. When you release the mouse button you’ll hear a click resembling the sound of a camera shutter.
3. Next look on your hard drive for a file called Picture 1 (or Picture 2, etc.). You can now open the file in an image editing program and resize or crop it as needed.
4. Save the image as a GIF or JPEG file if you plan to use it on a Web page. The image may now be inserted into a MS Word document for creating a handout, a PowerPoint presentation, or a Web page.
