Screen Capture Protocol

Materials and Equipment Needed

  1. Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro

Safety Issues

None

Time Required

Depends on number of screencaps being taken (each screencap only takes about 2-3 minutes once you become familiar with the process)

Procedure

There are two image programs that can be used for taking screencaps: Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. In general, taking screencaps with Adobe Photoshop is easier and results in higher-quality images. However, if you are taking screencaps of pull-down menus, or if you want to include the cursor in the screencap, then you need to use Paint Shop Pro.

Using Adobe Photoshop

Step Image

Go to the image that you want to take a screen capture of.

 

Press the Print Screen button to copy the contents of the screen to the clipboard.  If you only want to screencap the active window, then press Alt + Print Screen.  (On some computers, the Print Screen button is labeled PrtScn.)

 
Open Adobe Photoshop.  If there is no Photoshop desktop icon, then go to Start --> Run and type in "Photoshp."

Create a new image by going to File --> New.  Name the file and hit OK.  Then select Edit --> Paste.  The screencap image will appear onscreen.

 

Go to Layer --> Flatten Image.  This enables the picture to be saved as a jpeg file.

Save the image file as .jpg. (If you select jpeg in the Save As pulldown menu, Photoshop will automatically append the .jpg suffix to the end of the filename.)  When the jpeg save options dialog box comes up, select 9 for the image quality and leave the other settings alone.

Using Paint Shop Pro

Step Image
Open Paint Shop Pro (under the Start menu, it's listed as Screen Capture Software).
Go to Capture --> Setup.   Here you can choose what kind of area you want to capture.  When you are done adjusting the settings, click Capture Now.
Without closing Paint Shop Pro, open up the image that you want to take a screencap of.  Press F11.  A screencap of the image will appear in Paint Shop Pro.
Save the image file as .jpg.