“Mastering Proactive IT Support for Maximum IT Service Efficiency”
The snipping tool in Windows 10 is often one of those unknown apps which can be extremely useful for many users. I spend a lot of time on my computer and I create a lot of content to use in my training courses and my blog posts.
I use screen shots, or images of the actual computer interface in alot of my documentation and I therefore want to make sure that I’m creating these images in the quickest way possible. Let’s identify a few different terms you may have heard of and differentiate the differences between those terms.
A screenshot is the term used to describe our ability to take a picture of our comptuer screen (without using our phone or a camera). This is sometimes also referred to as a “screen grab”. This process creates an image out of the exact things we see on our computer at the time of taking the screenshot. There are actually two ways we can create a screenshot which I will outline below.
A full screenshot is when we take a picture of the entire screen, which will include any open programs or windows, the start button in the bottom left corner and the taskbar along with your system clock.
To create a full screen shot:
To use the screen shot in a document, presentation or email:
If you want to save the screen shot as an image file:
Where you want to take a screenshot of a single open window or program, this is where we take a screenshot of only the active window. You will see in the example below that it does not include the start button or taskbar area, only the active Microsoft Word window.
To create a screen shot of just the active window we have displayed:
To use the screen shot in a document, presentation or email:
If you want to save the screen shot as an image file:
Now that you know how to create a full screen shot and an active window screen shot, what about when you just need an image of a small section of the screen? This is where the snipping tool steps in. The snipping tool will allow you to “snip” any part of your screen out and use the image however you want.
The snipping tool has actually been around for a long time and Microsoft have now released an all new and improved version called Snip & Sketch. Both programs provide the snipping function though.
So that shows you the three different ways you can create a screenshot or screen grab and how you can utilise the Snipping Tool included in Windows 10. For some other great tips check out these posts:
Feel free to leave and questions or comments below.