While running various programs on a VISTA machine, it is sometimes necessary
to do a screen capture. This is useful for adding graphical illustrations to
VISTA help files. Pressing CTRL-PrtScrn will capture the entire screen.
ALT-PrtScrn will capture the current window. I wonder if their is a way in
which to select the type of graphic file than a JPG? I want to insert the
files into a web page and I would like to create a smaller files. It would
be nice to configure the capture tool instead of having to convert all of
the files with a graphic editor.
Hey Bart,
I might have misunderstood your question, so apologies if I am off track.
But ...
There are 2 totally different mechnisms in Vista, which you can use to
capture the screen:
- Windows has a built-in ability to capture to the clipboard, using
key-strokes like PrtScrn, Alt-PrtScrn anf Ctrl-PrtScrn. There is no separate
application for this, it's buried deep in the bowels of GDI32.DLL and
USER32.DLL
- Vista adds a new tool, SnippingTool.exe, which you can run and use to
capture images of the screen.
The first option, pressing the PrtScrn button, doesn't save the image as a
file. All it does is place a graphic into the Windows clipboard. It isn't a
JPG, BMP or PNG, it's just a bitmapped image. To use the screen capture in
any way, you need to then paste the image into an application. How the
application interprets the pasted image, and whether it tries to save it as
a file, is under the control of the particular application you are pasting
into. You can paste the image into Paintbrush, PhotoShop, Word, Sharepoint
Web Designer etc.
Snipping Tool on the other hand, does have a built-in ability to save the
image it captures as a file, independent of any other app. After you have
snipped the image you want, just go to the File menu in Snipping Tool and
choose Save As. You have options to save the image as a JPG, GIF, PNG or MHT
file. You can experiment to see which format is best for your purpose.
Snipping Tool doesn't know what the eventual use of the image you save will
be. The image might be put in an email or web page, so a lightweight format
would be good. Or, it might be used for a high-resolution image in a book or
PowerPoint presentation, so maximum data (and file size) would be called
for. If you need to make these changes, it is best left to a dedicated
graphics editor app, rather than having a cut-down, hokey file-shrinking
feature built into theSnipping Tool, which everyone complains about because
it isn't as functional as PhotoShop.
So I guess the questions are: which are you actually using? PrtScrn or the
Snipping Tool? And how are you actually saving the image to a file? (ie when
you "insert the files into a web page"?).
