How to Send Us a Screen Shot

How to Create a Screen Shot

Sometimes it’s much easier for us to see what’s going on and what you’re talking about by seeing what’s on your screen. Sending us at Webstix a screen shot of what you’re referring to can really help us diagnose a problem and fix it. We might see more clues that will help us fix or change what you need done. Here are some tips and ways to get a screen shot to us.

Take a Screen Shot on a Windows PC

How To Capture a Screen Shot of your Desktop or the Active Window in Windows (graphicssoft.about.com)
Take a screen capture (print screen) (windows.microsoft.com)
How to Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows (www.wikihow.com)
Capture and Save a Screenshot in Windows XP (video.about.com)

Basically, you’ll click the Print Screen button on your keyboard (PrtScr), which puts the screen capture in your clipboard, and then go into a graphics program like MS Paint or Photoshop and then paste it. From there, you can save it and then attach it to an email.

The best format to send us is a JPG image or PNG file because it’s a compressed image format, The files are smaller and are easy to send in an email as an attachment. Formats like BMP can be very large files.

Take a Screen Shot on a Mac

On a Mac, it’s even easier.

How To Capture a Screen Shot with Mac OS X (graphicssoft.about.com)

You’ll click command + shift + 3 (full screen) or else command + shift + 4 (select an area). The command + shift + 4 command works well for selecting a certain window by pressing the spacebar and dragging the camera icon to the window that you want to capture.

It will then place the PNG file on your desktop and then you can email it by attaching it to an email.

There’s also an application called “Grab” located in Applications > Utilities > Grab that has some more features of grabbing a screen or part of a screen, which includes including the mouse pointer.

Screen Shot Programs

There are additional programs which can help even further. You can add arrows or other things like boxes or circles to point out exactly what you’re talking about or write text on the screen shot image. Some are free or included with your operating system. In MS Paint, for example, you can use those included graphic tools to mark up the image. On a Mac, you can use Previews’s Annotate functions to draw ovals, lines, add text, etc. as well.

If you are using the FireFox browser, then here are some plugins / add on extentions that you can get:

Create a Screencast / Record Your Computer Screen

Yes, it’s not too difficult now to record your screen (as a movie) and talk into your computer’s (laptop’s) microphone and tell us what you want changed or adjusted by pointing to things, etc.

Conclusion / Tips

Please try to include your full screen. We might see something else going on that’s important. If you can, highlight the area(s) you are referring to.