Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Catpure Screenshots with Screen Print & Capture 32

Ever wonder how I create the screenshots on this blog? I use a free software called Screen Print & Capture 32. Yup, you can capture the full screen or the active window with Print Screen or Alt + Print Screen. If these are the only things you do, you don't really need this software. However, if you need to capture only a portion of the screen or capture the screenshot as a file, this is a good application for you.

After installing it, go to Start->All Programs->ScreenPrint32 v3->ScreenPrint 32 v3 to invoke the preferences window:


My favorite setting is to check the radio button for Prompt User for Capture Area and the checkbox Enable 'On The Fly' Configuration. Checking Prompt User for Capture Area lets you select a certain area of the screen to capture and checking Enable 'On The Fly' Configuration lets you decide whether you want to
  • Capture the full screen
  • Capture the active window
  • Capture a portion of the screen
each time you press the Print Screen button:


Remember to make sure that <Disabled> is selected in the Printer drop down box. Otherwise, the image will be sent to whatever printer you select, which is usually not what you want to do. (Of course, do select a printer if you want to print the screenshot) If you want to save the screenshot as an image file (such as JPEG), you should check the checkbox Save Captured Area to Disk. You can save the image in the following formats
  • GIF
  • PNG
  • BMP
  • JPG
This feature is very handy for me since I need to upload the image as a file to Blogger to make them displayed in my post. If I just use the traditional print screen feature, I'll need to paste the image in Paint and then save it as a file, which is one extra step :P

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