How to take screenshots and make use of the captured images

Let us jump right into it without much ado. I will be using the image of this blog for illustration purposes because it would be a great pity to miss such a blatant photo opportunity in terms of both marketing and advertising.

There are many free versions of screen capture software available for download. Unless you need a bit more gimmickry or comprehensive professional features, these free download versions are just adequate.

Of course, there are many other such software available. I use Wisdom-soft ScreenHunter 5.0 Free and Gadwin Printscreen 4.3.

The “Pro” or commercial version of some screen capture software will mark all your captured images, in bold red lettering, “UNREGISTERED VERSION,” until you register and pay for it. So, pay for it ASAP or use the free ‘amateur’ version.

The free versions are useful for routinely capturing onscreen images with one hotkey or a combination of two hotkeys that you can choose from a list provided conveniently, placing them on the clipboard automatically for pasting into any document of your choice, and saving to any file destination on your computer designated by you.

In fact, let us try something out. Can you guess which of the screen capture software mentioned above was actually used to produce each of the demonstrative images at the end of this post?

Many screen capture software set the image capture graphic file type to Windows Bitmap or BMP by default, even though other image file formats are also made available.

One more thing though is that the procedure for successfully capturing images onscreen, and making use of them conveniently later on, starts with how you save the images.

If you have Hewlett-Packard (HP) equipment, like me, you could choose to locate your screenshot image files in the ‘My Documents’ folder so that you can have easy access to them when you use the HP Image Zone for editing or manipulating the saved images.

You should configure the software as soon as possible after download and change that default file format to GIF image, JPEG bitmap, PNP image, TIFF bitmap or whatever type is accepted by the image editing software that you propose or plan to use to manipulate the final captured images.

Now, however, if you have already captured some important one-chance screenshots in the default format and find yourself stuck with ‘unusable’ images, there is a solution.

First of all, open your proposed image editing software environment and locate the screen capture file you designated as the target destination for your onscreen images. Right-click on the image you need to edit, open it with any one of the listed software that would display it properly. The Windows Picture and Fax Viewer usually does a wonderful job.

At the bottom of the screen on the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, you will find a blue-disc ‘SAVE’ icon.

Click on that blue icon and make sure you choose the correct file format, available from the drop down menu, that would make it possible to edit your image later on in your chosen image editing software.

So, a knotty problem is solved at last! A summary of the major steps mentioned above is provided below in – what else? – screen captures.