How to Take Screenshots to Jazz up a Post (Mac and Windows)
It caught your eye, didn’t it?
Pictures can add life to your posts. Since most people (approximately 65%) are visual learners, adding pictures and screenshots to your posts will grab their attention and help them remember what they read.
If you are writing tutorials, compiling a gallery of websites, or teaching your readers how to use a software, you should insert screenshots wherever you can. This will add creative flair and visual clarity to what could be an overall boring post. To insert your screenshots into a blog post, see How To Insert Pictures into a Blog Post with Style.
On a Windows:
Windows Vista and Windows 7: Open the Start Menu and type Snipping Tool in the search bar. When you click on the Snipping Tool program, your screen will lighten and your cursor will become cross-hairs. Click and drag over the area that you want to save and when you let go, your picture will open in the Snipping Tool program so you can annotate and save it.
If you think you will be using Snipping Tool often, add it to your quick links via the Snipping Tool options (see screenshot) or pin it to your start menu.
Windows XP doesn’t have a specific program for screenshots like Snipping Tool, but it is still fairly simple to do.
To take a screenshot, press Prnt Scrn / SysRq on your keyboard. This will copy the current screen to your clipboard as a picture. Open your favorite graphics editor (Photoshop, Paint, etc.) and press Ctrl + V to paste it in. Save it as a .png or .jpg. To take a picture of the window in focus, press Alt + Prnt Scrn / SysRq and then paste it into a graphics editor.
On a Mac:
If you want to take a Screenshot of the whole screen, press Command + Shift + 3. You will hear a camera shutter and the screenshot will be saved as a .png on your desktop.
If you want a picture of only part of your screen, press Command + Shift + 4. Your cursor with change to a cross-hairs icon. Click and drag over the area that you want to save. When you release you will hear a shutter sound as your screenshot is saved on the desktop.
If you want to take a picture of a whole window (but not the whole screen), press Command + Shift + 4. Wait for the cross-hairs icon to appear and then press space. This will turn your cursor icon into a camera. As you mouse over an open window (in this example, Safari), it will highlight to show you what is selected. Click on the window you want. A .png of the window, complete with a transparent drop shadow, will be saved on your desktop.
5 Comments
AstroGremlin on July 22, 2011
Josh, this is great and I wish I could use it. I use XP and wasn’t able to use the tip for taking a screen shot because I have a generic photo editor, Nero. Yes, I’m totally lame when it comes to photo handling. On the other hand, your use of screenshots on your site is enviable, and makes your articles pop with authenticity and helpfulness. I can tell you have a few other tricks up your sleeve, too, with your beautiful page design!
AstroGremlin recently posted..The Cries for Help
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Josh McBride on July 28th, 2011
AstroGremlin,
Windows XP comes with a basic graphics program called Paint. It is very limited in features so you won’t be able to add transparent shadows, but it should still work for opening your screenshots.
Open your Start Menu and click on All Programs. Under Accessories, you should find Paint. Whenever you want to take a screenshot, just open paint and press Ctrl + V to paste the screenshot (that you copied to the clipboard via the Prnt Scrn key). Save it as .jpg and upload it to your new blog post.
I hope this works for you. I plan to publish a tutorial on inserting pictures into your posts tomorrow morning.
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Sarah Elisabeth on July 24, 2011
Great post. When you don’t know, trying to figure out how to take a screenshot is a headache!
I’ve been referring new bloggers to your site.
Sarah Elisabeth recently posted..Novella? Short Story? And What’s Flash Fiction?
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Josh McBride on July 28th, 2011
Thanks so much for the referrals, Sarah! Hopefully I can get my services page up so that I can start monetizing some of this traffic…
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