Easy Screen Shots

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 August 2011 10:25

Written by Don Lohse

When you need a screen shot (capture), it is one of those things that you just want to get done as quickly as possible and get back to what you were doing. Unfortunately, without a little preparation, it just isn't that easy.

Traditionally, the way to do it is to press the "Print Screen" key. So far, so good, but what that does is put the image of the entire screen (I only wanted a portion!!) on the clipboard. You can then paste it into your document. If you did in fact only want a portion of the screen, you have to open an image editing program, paste the file, crop it, save as a file and then import it into your document. Not exactly a quick and easy process. Enter Gadwin Systems Print Screen software.

Once installed, this Windows freeware application allows you to press the Print Screen (or other hotkey choice) and select a portion of the screen with your mouse. The selected portion goes right to the clipboard (or to a file for later use), which you can then paste into your document. That is the way most people would expect the process to work. Configuring the application is quite easy and has a nice clean interface.

There are lots of screen capture programs available, but this one seems to be one of the easiest, which is always a good thing. You can download the application directly from Gadwin Systems (http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/). The software works on any version of Windows (all the way back to Windows 98!), and uses 10 megabytes of RAM. It can be loaded at Windows startup or called as needed if you are a bit short on RAM.

I know this is a real basic subject, but if you have been struggling with screen shots, try this and get back to your real work.