Comp25: General - Screen Capture

Capturing the contents of the screen and saving it to a file is an easy process.  You can choose to capture the entire screen or just the active window.

After capturing the screen, you can (1) embed the image into a Word document, (2) save the image as a file for uploading to Blackboard or (3) include in a website as a link..

Windows: Option #1: Capturing a screen for Copy/Paste to Word: (Use when pasting screen capture directly to Word)

1. Make sure the screen or window is exactly how you want it to appear in the capture.  Then, press either:

• Alt-PrintScreen to capture the active Window, or
• PrintScreen to capture the entire screen
  
  This places the capture into your clipboard.

2. Immediately after taking a capture, open your Word document and place your cursor in the location you want the image to appear.
3. Hit Edit, Paste (or Ctrl-V).

4. Cropping your Screen Capture (Optional)

   It may be useful to crop (cut off the edges) your screen capture so that only the important information is displayed.  In Word, you can easily crop a graphic by following these steps:

   1. Click on the graphic you want to crop
   2. If you do not see the Picture toolbar (shown below), turn it on by choosing View, Toolbars, Picture

      

   3. Click the crop icon (7th from the left)
   4. Drag the crop handles on your graphic inward

Option #2: Saving the Capture to a File (Use when uploading screen capture as a file to BlackBoard)

Immediately after taking a capture, follow these directions to save the capture:

1. Make sure the screen or window is exactly how you want it to appear in the capture.  Then, press either:

• Alt-PrintScreen to capture the active Window, or
• PrintScreen to capture the entire screen

2. OPEN: Paint and Paste the clipboard contents into a new drawing
3. CHOOSE:  Save
4. CHOOSE: the folder to save it to (probably U:\web-docs)
5. Change the the drawing filetype to GIF
6. Give it a meaningful name

Uploading your Screen Capture to Blackboard

1. Follow the instructions above to Save your capture to a file in your U: drive and take note of where you saved it.  Be sure to give it a meaningful name.
2. When completing your assignment in Blackboard, choose the "Browse..." button located near "Attach Local File" as shown in the illustration here. 
3. Locate the file you saved and choose Open.  The filename will appear in the text field.
4. If you need to add additional files, choose "Add Another File" and repeat from step 2.
5. When you have finished your assignment, click "Submit" to turn it in.  Note you can also click "Save" to save your progress and return to it later to finish.

Mac: Screengrab

1. Apple-Shift 3 captures the entire window and the image is then saved to the desktop as image1.jpg or image1.png
2. Apple Shift-4 allows you the point-click-drag the area you want to copy and then saves it to your desktop.
3. Once you have captured the image to the desktop, insert the file in your document as an image.