How to Take a Screenshot

Hello, Anne-Marie of ByAmor here with the basic, standard guide to taking a screenshot in Windows, in response to a request from Fi of Patchwork Delights.

Depending on what computer package you've got, you may have quicker options for 'snipping' or capturing images from your screen. This tutorial shows the good old fashioned way of doing it if you don't have, or like me, can't seem to find :-], one of those nifty tools.

Let's suppose, for example, that you have been featured in, or curated, a treasury and you wish to post it on your blog. I'm going to use a treasury I made recently, 'Chocs & Flowers for Valentines Day' as an example.

'Image on-screen'

Forgive me please if I state the obvious, but you're going to capture exactly what you see on your screen. So before you do anything, you may need to zoom out ('Cntrl' and the minus sign - ) to fit in the whole image and or, hit F11 on the top of your keyboard to get the image on full screen.What you see on your screen is what you will get!


The 'Print Screen' button can be found on the top right of your keyboard. it may be labelled 'PrtScn'. You hit it, but nothing seems to happen, right? Actually, the entire image on your screen has been saved to a clip board. You just need to paste it into a graphics programme to see it.

After you hit the 'Print Screen' button open up a basic image editting programme such as Microsoft Paint.

Here, go to 'Edit' and click on 'Paste'. Voila! There's the screenshot.

Go to 'File' and choose 'Save As' (not 'Save). Save the image to a folder in 'Pictures'. For some images it's best to save as a Gif, but I have found with treasuries featuring lots of colour the image can come out a little strange, so I stick to Jpegs. Close out of Paint.

'Cropped and auto-adjusted'

Now you can open the image in your Pictures folder using your preferred photo editting package. Crop and edit the same as you would a photograph.

With treasuries, there's not much to be done so I use the basic, ready-installed Microsoft Office Picture Manager to crop, and perhaps adjust the lighting to make the images stand out. With most treasuries, auto-adjust will do the job nicely in terms of colour and light. I find with treasuries, there is no need to resize once I've cropped out the bits I don't need. Certainly, don't go below 500 in width.

Once saved, the image is now ready to upload to your blog just like a photo.



*To learn how to make treasuries, check out this tutorial.

*To express a request for team blog tutorials and articles, please use this blog wish list thread . Any Crafty Ireland team member is welcome to write for the blog, so please contact our Blog Editor, Brigitte of Purls of Colour if you'd like to contribute.