Screen Capture

[RayintheUK]

For some years, I've used the screen capture tool (the camera icon) in Paintshop Pro to grab parts of the screen and "Print Scrn" for full screen captures. In Vista, Paintshop Pro's screen capture has become quite useless, so I was looking around for its replacement, when I had a "Doh!" moment.

Vista contains a Snipping Tool - and it's brilliant! It performs rectangular sections - drag a box around it, window captures, full-screen captures and freehand captures - draw a line round it.

It seems to be included in all versions apart from the most basic Home version, but as it's ported from XP, I'd guess that it can be installed on all XP variants and Vista Home Basic (but I can't try or verify that).

You may know about this, but I didn't - so it may help someone.

Ray.

[BobSch]

Apparently the Snipping tool is based on Snippy. It only works on Win XP.
It's a much more lightweight tool but basically has all the important features for screen capture.

[poolhound]

hitting Ctrl + PrtScrn on any keyboard will capture a full screenshot on any system.

Sorry Ray I just noted you had made that point already :-(

[tuttlejr]

Check out SNAGIT. They have a free trial before you buy. One of the best utilities around. The latest version just came out. You can even capture Adobe Acrobat pages which others cannot do.

[Copper]

One of my favorite computer pranks is to take a screen capture of someone's screen and then display it at full size. It's non-invasive and is good for a chuckle to see people get frustrated when the desktop icons don't respond to anything.

[dbhost]

Print Screen will capture full screen.
Alt + Print Screen will capture the active window.

This works on Windows 95 through XP Pro. No idea if M.$. messed this up in Vista, I have no intent of finding out...

It also works with KDE desktops, or Ksnapshot can be used to clip just a selected area of screen.

Mac guys. Care to chime in on this?

[RayintheUK]

Check out SNAGIT. They have a free trial before you buy. You can even capture Adobe Acrobat pages which others cannot do.

The Snipping Tool in Vista is free and also captures Adobe pages.

Print Screen will capture full screen.
Alt + Print Screen will capture the active window.

This works on Windows 95 through XP Pro. No idea if M.$. messed this up in Vista, I have no intent of finding out..

Yes, it works in Vista, I've already confirmed that, but Snipping Tool captures any part in any shape too.

Ray.

[twistsol]

Mac guys. Care to chime in on this?

Macs have always had a similar feature. OS 9 and prior Command-Option-Shift-3 would send a screen shot to the clipboard and Command-Shift-3 would send a screenshot to a .png file on the desktop.

OS-X does both of these as well as Command-Option-Shift-4 sends the area selected in a rectangle to the clipboard and Command-Shift-4 sends the area selected in a rectangle to a .png file on the desktop.

Did I mention how intuitive Macs are?

[Scottydont]

I use Snag it from Techsmith too. It works great. I use their Camtasia software to create tutorials and software demos.