Taking Screen Shot with Photoshop, Fast & Free

If you’re writer, web master or even forum poster, most of the time you’ll need your screen shot to explain some process or even want to show the new highest score, that you just break, from some popular puzzle game to your friends by email. You may use many fancy tool, that you can download from all over the internet. They’re both freeware and shareware. But they’re many ways you can capture the screen fast and easy without waste of your system resource by download and install additional program. Let’s see for both Windows and Mac user

For Windows User:

If you’re using Windows (all version). You can easily use print screen button in your keyboard. This button locate at upper right conner of your keyboard next to the F12 button (It’s may different depend on manufacturer), labeled Prt Src or PrtSc. Read more about Print Screen Button Click here.

Step by Step:

1. Re-arrange your screen as your want to picture.
2. Press Print Screen button.
3. Open Adobe Photoshop (or If you don’t have photoshop open Paint locate in Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint)
4. in Adobe Photoshop create new by using menu File > New… or Ctrl+n
5. The New Dialog Box will open just press OK
6. In your new file choose menu Edit > Paste or Ctrl+v.

That’s it and then just save your file as any format that suite you. For Screen Shot picture I recommend to use .gif format. Read more about how to choose the right image format here.
It’s may sound a bit inconvenience that you have to launch photoshop (or other graphic application) every time you want to capture the screen. But 99.9% of the time after I capture screen shot I have to adjust it in photoshop anyway. So it’s no use to waste my system resource with other third party application. Except, in case you have to capture a lot screen shots everyday the third party application will have more functions, like capture only selected windows, may suit you more. This will save your time to crop it one by one in photoshop. One of popular third party screen capture software is Snagit form TechSmith.

You may notice that in New Dialog box in Photoshop, The new image resolution and dimension are automatically set as your monitor screen resolution that you currently use. So when you paste image in to new file it will be perfectly fit.

Photoshop will read from windows clipboard every time you create new file, if it’s image in your clipboard it will read resolution and fill it for you. But if you plan to paste different screen shot in one file you can fill in dimension yourself or simply choose other preset rather than clipboard.This also work when you copy image from other graphic application and create as new in photoshop or even from with it photoshop itself.

For Mac User:

For Mac OS8 or later, It’s even more easier and more options for mac user to taking screen shot with out any other third party application. By use following key board shot cut:

• To take a picture of the whole screen: press Command-Shift-3, then click any where in the screen
• To take a picture of part of the screen: press Command-Shift-4, then drag to select the area you want in the picture.
• To take a picture of a window, the menu bar, the Dock, or other area: press Command-Shift-4, then press the Space bar. Move the pointer over the area you want so that it’s highlighted, then click. If you decide you want to drag to select the area, press the Space bar again.

For Mac OS8 and OS9 the captured file will save in root of your running OS hard disk. For Mac OSX it will be save on your desktop. The file will be named as picture1, picture2, picture3 and so on…
For Mac OSX, you have another option. In Mac OSX there is build-in screen capture application call Grab. You can find it in /applications/utilities in your installed OS-X hard disk.

1. Open Grab and select a command from the Capture menu.
   • Selection takes a picture of a part of the screen that you select.
   • Window takes a picture of a window you select.
   • Screen takes picture of entire screen.
     
   • Timed Screen lets you start a timer and activate part of the screen (such as a menu), and then takes a picture of the screen.
2. Follow the instructions in the dialog for the command you choose.
3. choose File > Save

Grab saves screen shots as files in TIFF format. You can use the Preview application to view these files and export them to other formats, such as JPEG

To see information about a screen shot you’ve taken, such as the size and depth, choose Edit > Inspector.

That’s it… Hope will be useful.

Related topic: Resize screen shot with best quality using photoshop

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

	Share This	Bookmarks this Page

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 6:46 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.