How to Take Screenshots

Windows

Taking The Screenshot

Press the Print Scrn key on your keyboard. It can be found above the Insert key and to the right of the F12 key. On some keyboards, including laptop/notebook keyboards, you may need to press the "function" or "fn" key in combination with the "Print Screen" key. Anything on the screen is now stored in the computer's memory, or the 'Clipboard.'

Tip: A key combination of Alt + Print Scrn will take a screenshot of only the current window, making cropping of your new picture slightly easier!

Warning: You cannot take another screenshot, or copy anything (using cut and paste) at this point! The screenshot has been saved into your computer's temporary memory, and it will be deleted if you copy anything, take another screenshot or turn your computer off!

The Picture

Open up Paint or another graphics program like Photoshop or PaintShop Pro, and paste it by pressing Ctrl+V together.

Cropping

Cropping is very important! Most of the time, you only want a specific part of the game screen, or maybe even the entire game screen. Crop out anything you don't need, like the side menus (unless you need it). You will need to use the selection tool in Paint to select the part you want, press Ctrl + C to copy it, Ctrl + N to make a new page, and then Ctrl + V to paste it into a new document. Other programs have tools to crop and add effects that you can use.

In paint, you want to select the marquee tool, in the top left hand corner of the toolbax (in red):

Then just select whatever part of your picture you want, press Ctrl + C to copy it, press Ctrl + N to clear the excess part of the picture, and then paste what you copied with Ctrl + V.

Saving Your New Screenshot

You can't forget this part! you need to save your new, editted screenshot

Since .bmp (Bitmap) images are big and 'unfriendly' to the web, you should save it as a .gif or .png to make it smaller. In Paint, select the format you want to save in from the 'type' menu, and then type in a name with the same extension (.gif or .png).

FAQ

Q: Why not save it as a .jpg?

A: Well, .jpg's are actually meant for photos, like the ones you take with a camera. They aren't meant for computer generated art due to the wide range of colors (and most computer art is pixelized). Of course, you can still save screenshots as a .jpg, but there is generally more distortion and a larger file size.

Macintosh

All Mac computers come with a program called Grab that is pre-installed in /Applications/Utilities/.

To get grab open up spotlight and type in 'grab'. Now open up the program. You will not see any windows, just options at the top. To take pictures you must go into 'capture', and you will have the following options:

• Selection (Shortcut is A+shift+Apple key): This lets you crop your picture directly, with a nice red box that you can drag over your image.
• Window (Shortcut is W+shift+Apple key): This takes a picture of the window you are in, example Safari: Runescape.
• Screen (Shortcut is Z+apple key): This takes a picture of your current computer screen.
• Timed Screen (Shortcut is Z+shift+Apple key): This waits an amount of time that you may set before taking a picture of your entire computer screen.

To save your images go into 'file' then select save, shortcut: Apple key+S. All pictures you take will be saved in .png format.

Imageshack Quickshot

ImageShack Quickshot is a small program that allows you to easily take screenshots without having to go through each of the above steps (paste, crop, and save) before being able to take another one. It's a very useful tool, especially if you find youself annoyed with having to individually save each and every one of your screenshots, one at a time.

Some of the benefits of this program are:

• You can set your own hotkeys to save and upload your screenshots automatically.
• Saves each screenshot in a format defined by you (png or jpg) - no need to stop your game and save them anymore!
• You can take a fullscreen picture, or just a screenshot of your currently open window.

You can get Quickshot from the ImageShack website.