Tutorial: Snipping Tool

A few weeks ago K.S Brooks showed you how to take and use screen captures. Today, I would like to show you how to use a very useful free tool which is a programme that is part of Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. It allows you to take specific shots of your screen. It is ideal for tutorials (ahem!) and for making your blog or website look professional. So, let’s get those scissors and get snipping.

To start the Snipping Tool follow these steps:

1. Click on the Start button to open your Start Menu.

2. Next click on the All Programs menu option.

3. Then click on the Accessories group.

4. Last, but not least, click on the Snipping Tool icon which looks like this:

If you are running Windows 8, you can just search for Snipping Tool at the Windows 8 Start Screen.

The snipping tool should now be started and you will see a screen similar to the one below. Continue reading “Tutorial: Snipping Tool”

Tutorial: Screen Captures

How did I make this? Stay tuned and you’ll find out!

Screen captures (also known as screen shots) come in handy for many reasons. You can use them to show someone when your computer is doing something funky, preserve book reviews in an image file, capture blog comments for legal reasons, provide instructions to someone, create print-outs of web-based stuff for promotional materials, and many other purposes.

While some things put up on the Internet are “forever,” some things aren’t. So I try to grab an image of any press I get and put that on my website. I include the link at the top so people can see where the story originated, but if that link becomes void it’s now literally preserved forever on my site. Here’s an example of a story run in a Vancouver-area online newspaper. The great thing about that is that you can trim out all the other “briefs” and just focus on yours. This, of course, is just one usage. Continue reading “Tutorial: Screen Captures”