'How to make screenshots' tutorial

[jensked]

I noticed many people don't know how to take screenshots. Maybe some of the mods can make a sticky of this, so we don't have to explain it again and again. (for Apple users, scroll to the next post)

1) Normally, you press the button 'print screen' (next to F12) and you go to Paint or another imaging program and you click paste (or Ctrl+v). You can cut out the parts you don't want (you may not want us to see the dirty websites your surfing to). Pressing ALT + Print Scrn takes only the active window

2) Windows Media Player
Press Ctrl + I and save the image.
or
You can't just press print screen in WMP, you have to go to
- Tools -> Options
- the Performance tab
- Advanced button and uncheck "Use Overlays" under video acceleration
Then you can print screen and paste it.

3) VLC Player
When playing a video in VLC Player, pause the video and go to VIDEO -> SNAPSHOT. The still is now saved in the format you selected under preferences > video. (you can also choose the path there)

4) Power DVD
There's a button in Power DVD that takes a screenshot of the video it's playing. You can select the filetype/size and the path under preferences.
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/2...rdvd1606cn.jpg

5) BSPlayer
Press P to take the screenshot. It will be stored in your BSplayer folder.

6) go to Analog X Capture
little application that settles itself in the system tray. You can press a hotkey to capture everything or the active window. Bitmap is stored in the app's folder.

Hosting a file, can be done here: www.imageshack.us
I'm sure there are also other ways and other utilities...but I think you'll get along just fine with one of these.

[monkeymax]

Good idea. I'd just like to add to this for the Mac users, but as I still only use Mac OS 9 I can't guarantee that the OS X instructions are correct - someone else will have to check for me. I know these worked on earlier versions of X but I've not even tried 10.4 yet, so don't know...

Mac OS 9:
To take a screenshot of the entire screen, press Command+Shift+3 simultaneously. This will place a picture file inside the folder for your main hard disk (the drive your active system folder is on).
To take a screenshot of just an area of the screen, press Command+Shift+4 simultaneously. Then you can draw a marquee around the area you want the snapshot taken of. Alternatively, instead of drawing the marquee, press the space bar and a snapshot of the active window will be taken.
Again, a picture file will be automatically created with that image in the main folder of the hard disk.
You can keep snapping away multiple times and the system will automatically increase the numbering of the files sequentially.

Mac OS X:
As with OS 9 - you press Command+Shift+3 simultaneously to get a snapshot of the whole screen and Command+Shift+4 plus a drag to take a snapshot of just an area (or spacebar for the active window or menu - as with OS 9).
This time, the snapshots are saved on your desktop. In earlier versions of OS X they're saved as PDF files, in 10.4 they're saved as PNG files.

Note:
If you have multiple monitors, taking a snapshot of the entire screen will grab an image of all screens. As far as I know taking snapshots will grab an image of movies too - at least it does with the DivX's I tried in OS 9 using Quicktime...


Alternatives:
You could also try using a piece of Shareware software called Snapz which does a great job of snapshots on the Mac.


Oh and on the PC, I find that Jasc's PaintShop Pro's Screen Capture facility is fantastic and I recommend any users of PaintShop Pro on PC try it (File>Import>Screen Capture>Setup).


Hope that helps. If I missed anything out, just shout!

[Speedtouch]

Adding in some more stuff. This info is on Windows Vista (I use Ultimate but I expect this covers all versions)

WinDVD 8




After (4), the standard 'Save As' window comes up.

Windows Media Player On Vista

Just make it full screen, let the time bar disappear, then hit Print Screen.

They've finally made it easy.

[vanderwater]

I have just updated my Windows Media Player to version 11 and the control I no longer works any suggestions?

[Shawn]

This is old, but at Speedtouch's post. I can't get over the fact that you took photos of your computer screen to show people how to take screenshots.

[ABxCD]

If you pasted and edited your screenshots in the graphic-program of your choice, please do us all a favor und save it as .png.
No artefacts, small filesizes and everything. It's just the right format.

[Archie411]

at Speedtouch
Anyway I use Snag It 9 for my things.
Default Print screen button can be used to take long srolling images or take a screenshot of window with out editing it afterwards.
I find it very easy to use and I would recommend it to anyone.

And im sure if you searched enough you can find a "free" one....

[Cobol74]

Snag it for me too. Works great!

[diti]

Hi - I've been trying for about 2 hours to find out how to produce a screenshot from Youtube.

I've stopped the video so that I can do the screenshot. However, I seem to have a choice between the whole thing (including URL info, comments etc) or enlarging it to full screen, with apparent loss of quality, plus the run time thingy at the bottom. I've been putting them into paint as advised, though I'm not familiar with it, and thought I could just crop it like in iphoto plus 4, which I use a lot, but when I try that by using 'cut' the whole picture disappears completely.

I managed to save one pic but it's unusable for demots etc because it has the run time thingy, so I know I'm right in principle but missing something. Or is it not possible to get screenshots from Youtube, and if not, where are people getting them from?

Sorry for the long message, but it's now driving me bonkers and I would appreciate someone with a technical bent to help me out.

[CD82]

Can you give me the link to the video and the time you want the screenshot taken? I'll do it...

edit: alternatively there are programs like JDownloader which can download streams from youtube, so you can edit the video files locally.

[diti]

Thnx CD82, I want to know how to do it to make demots in general, rather than just one particular screenshot, so it's a program I'm looking for. I thought it would be easy, cos I'm a bit of in IT novice, but obviously it's going to be a bit more difficult. I'll investigate JDownloader and see what happens.

Where do people get their pics from when they make demotivators? Do they just use the Top Gear site/Google etc, or are they all making their own screenshots?

[CD82]

I see. So after you downloaded the stream with JDownloader you'll need something else to make the screencaps. VirtualDub is quite good at that sort of thing because you can pause and go through every single frame of the video.

[diti]

I really appreciate your advice, CD82, but I said I was a bit of an IT novice - I should have put "complete idiot"! I eventually downloaded JDownloader, realised I didn't even know what zip meant, my computer started blocking things left, right and centre, so in the end I've just deleted the whole program.

I'm sure I will find a way to deal with it (I cracked Phyrefile eventually) but I'm just going back to online sources for my pics for the time being. Thanks again, though!

(Know any good sites for TG pics apart from the official site and Google etc?)