A screenshot, also known as a screengrab or a screendump, is an image of the screen that you are looking at. This can be created as easily as pressing the Prt Sc key and then pasting (Ctrl+v) it into a word document. There are also some tricks that can make your screenshot more suited to what you want to use it for. By following the steps below, you will be able to more efficiently work with screentshots in the various applications.

Word and PowerPoint

1. A shot can be taken of the full screen simply by pressing the print screen key (labelled Prt Sc in the top right-hand corner of your keyboard).*

* If you only want a shot of the window that you are working in, use Alt+Prt Sc.

2. The screenshot can then be added to the Word or PowerPoint document by right-clicking the area you want the image to appear and selecting paste (or pressing Ctrl+v).

The screenshot can then be edited using the Picture Tools menu (below) allowing you to crop it, send it behind text and so on. To access this menu double-click the picture and it will appear at the top of the screen.

You can also highlight different sections by inserting shapes such as arrows, boxes, text boxes and callouts from the Insert tab by clicking Shapes button.

Smart

If you are creating stuff for the Interactive White Board, the Smart software can take screenshots for you using the Camera tool. This appears as a camera in the toolbar across the top.

1. By selecting the camera tool, from left to right  you can: 

• Draw a rectangle around what you want captured.
• Capture part of the screen – move the mouse over the section you want, it’ll turn grey, click it.
• Capture the whole screen.
• Draw around a shape that you want captured.

2. When you take a screenshot it will automatically be pasted onto your Smart worksheet where it can be resized, drawn all over and so forth.

Screenshots for the web

If you want to upload your screenshot to a blog or wiki, you will usually need your screenshot to be in an image format like jpg. You can do this by taking the screenshot, pasting it into MS Paint and then saving it as a jpg or, if you have Windows 7, you can use the Snipping Tool and then save it as a jpg with that.

The Snipping Tool has some other cool features such as the ‘Record steps to reproduce a problem’ which allow to take a series of shots to show a process and then save them as an html file. If you want to know more about this, come and see me.

 Happy snapping!