Grabbing and Posting Screenshots

Here’s a quick tutorial on making a screen-shot of what you see on your computer screen for posting.

First, get to the place where you want to capture the screen.

Hit the “Print Screen” or “Prt Scr” button. It’s located in the upper right portion of your keyboard.

Now go to START > RUN.

Type “pbrush” in that window with no quotes. That opens paintbrush.

Go to EDIT > PASTE.

That will paste your screen to Paint Brush.

Go to FILE > SAVE AS and name your file. It’s easiest to save it to the DESKTOP so you can find it.

In the forum, when making a new post, click on the PAPERCLIP icon.

Click on the first BROWSE button and then navigate to your DESKTOP.

Select the file you just saved, and then UPLOAD it.

Now post your thread, and your picture will show up.

---------- Advanced --------------

While in PAINTBRUSH, you can use the CROP tool to select just a portion of the screen-shot you grabbed.

Select it, then go to EDIT > COPY to copy the bit that you highlighted.

Now go to FILE > NEW (and select NO for the SAVE option). Once you have a new palette, go to EDIT > PASTE to paste the bit that you just copied.

Now save it and post it as usual.

Never new it also launched with pbrush, I always launched it via the old name, "mspaint"...for Microsoft Paint. But hey I'm a fan of "least keystrokes and mouseclicks" to get a result.

Another tip...since just default printscreen button captures everything you see from top to bottom and from side to side on your screen, resulting it an oversized picture with possibly more than you want to post. Say you just want to post some error message window, or the window of one particular program...
Click on that window or message that you want to take a screenie of, to make it the "active" window. Hold down the "Alt" button while hitting the "PrtSc" button...and your screenshot will only be of the active window or box that you had highlighted.

Ooh - Like that one Stonecat. I also like the I also like the paper clip Keltin posted. I have been using MS Paint to cut and resize screen shots. This will save some work. All this couples with EasyThumbnails that Doc posted a while back are really good stuff.

Just to throw a couple more irons in the fire, The MAC folks have grab and the Vista / Windows 7 folks have the snipping tool that are really handy.

I've always wondered how to do that! Thanks for this tutorial.