Microsoft PAINT -- Save Your Images

Tip suggested by John Attig, Cataloging and Metadata Services.

John came across a handy tip published by pcmag.com about an easy and efficient way to save sceen captures. John shared the tip withUnicode team members who are doing a lot of screen captures. However, it's such a useful tip that we decided to share it here in Tech Tips too.

An earlier Tech Tip discussed how to use the PrintScreen key to take a snapshot image of whatever is on your screen, while Alt+PrintScreen lets you copy just the currently active window. Today's tip lets you paste the image using the Paint graphics program, which is found on your Accessories menu. To find it, go to: Start / All Programs / Paint. Then paste the image you want to save onto the Paint canvas.

If you need to trim the canvas away, so that only your image remains, no problem! You can trim by clicking and draggin the "dots" at the canvas edge to the edges of your image. Or, you can select Image/Attributes to reduce the canvas size in Image. In this case, just change the width and height to something small, it will expand as needed to fit around the image.

You can save your image in PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format, which compresses the image without losing detail. JPG is also a good choice, although the file size will be somewhat bigger. However, pcmag.com warns that you should not save as a BMP file, which is very space-intensive.

Summary: There are lots of great ways to save screen captures, such as PhotoShop, and Jing. However, "Paint" comes standard as one of the Microsoft tools on your computer, so give it a try!