For some reason I hate the ‘take new screenshots’ portion of every new release. I’ve even got a little Photoshop action that resizes everything for me, but it still drive me nuts. If I didn’t know that people love screenshots, I’d try to skip the whole thing. 🙂
I’m glad to know I’m not alone in this! Taking screen shots is a major pain for some reason.
What do you use, especially when you want only a part of the screen, or want to focus on a widget?
Anyhow, having done UI stuff, mocking up stuff and taking screenshots has now become cool.
I figure I have to do it anyway, so might as well enjoy doing it. 🙂
I use Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4 to grab a portion of the screen to the clipboard.
Funny you mention this today, as I have to do some of that today.
Are those commands on a Mac? Tried on PC and doesn’t work (?)
Yes, those are on a Mac (there isn’t a Cmd key for Windows). I also use the Mac to take Windows screenshots, via remote desktop.
The cmd+shift+4 works for portions of a screenshot on macs and also for cmd+shift+3 for full screen shots.
A little trick for al other mac users out there is cmd+shift+4 then space_bar and it will grab the window that the cursor (now a camera icon) is hovering over.
It’s the little things like this that make all the difference.
Also: on PC there is some deal that I remember from long ago about alt+shift+screen_print copying the full screen to the clipboard. But don’t quote me on that. 😉
Cmd-Shift-4 will create a PDF of the selection, Cmd-Ctrl-Shift-4 will copy the selection to the clipboard.
Not having a screenshot is one thing that will easily cross you off my list of things to try when I’m after a new product.
Bingo.
My process for screenies on XP:
Get my window, often a browser sized how I like it.
Hit Alt-Print Screen to capture the window to the clipboard. Using print screen by itself will grab the whole screen(s).
Paste in Photoshop. Repeat for as many screens as I need. The result is a multilayered PSD w/ all screens. Save.
Crop the browser chrome out of the image. Hit Photoshop’s “save layers as files” to crank out jpg’s of each layer.
The best app I’ve found for doing screen captures (for windows anyway) is SnagIt — snagit.com.
You can set it up to grab a specific region/size starting from an offset of the upper left corner of the sceen and dump the capture into a file, the clipboard, to the printer, etc. It will also resize images for you. It’s a real timesaver when it comes to doing documentation.
Poor Windows people. 🙂
Poor mac people, who don’t have something as awesome as Snag-It 🙂
Seriously, it’s great. And as a doc writer, I can say that screenshots are worth a 1000 words.
I think I’m with the “poor mac people” camp. CMD-Shift-3, what the heck is that?
Having a single button on the keyboard labeld “Print Screen”. Makes more sense to me.
Perhaps, but on Windows there isn’t a free built-in utility to take screenshots, or built-in functionality to capture directly to .PDF, or built-in functionality to allow you to crop just the area of the screen you want. There is a reason I do all of my screenshots (including PC screenshots) on the Mac.
Tasks Pro™ 1.5 and Tasks 2.5!
I’m very pleased to announce the release of Tasks Pro™ 1.5 and Tasks 2.5. These releases are the first major upgrades since the initial release of each product.
As promised, customers who puchased a license on or after October 1, 2004 have …
I don’t like take screenshots too often but sometimes I have to do…
In Windows I use Quick Screen Capture from etrusoft now. I use Snagit too but it looks some too big for me. I also tried some free tools but also not satisfied.
the urls may help:
http://www.etrusoft.com
http://www.snagit.com
Maybe they’ll help others – those utilities aren’t helpful for me. I guess some people are willing to just take a screenshot directly to an output file and stick it on their web page or in their documentation, but I find I need to process each one in Photoshop first to get the polish and consistency I want.
Also, I’m on a Mac.
For anyone who stumbles upon this site, this is for you: The mac comes with a built in program called Grab.