How to use Window’s Snipping Tool For Better Screen Captures

Windows comes with the ability to take a screenshot of your current screen with the Print + Screen button, which works perfectly for small purpose like screen shots of complete windows, screen shots of active Window. But what if you are looking more features in screen capture tool? There is lot of free and paid screen capture tools available, but if you don’t want to install another applications just to take screenshots you can use a tool built into Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Windows 7 and Windows Vista comes with a built in screen capture program called the ‘Snipping Tool‘. Window’s Snipping Tool can be used as an alternative to print+screen option. Snipping Tool has some advance features which Print + Screen doesn’t come with. Some of Snipping Tools advance features are listed below.

  • Take screen shot of selected portion of area in rectangular shape.
  • Take screen shot of selected portion of area in any way you want
  • Take screen shot of full windows
  • Take screen shot of desired portion of windows.
  • Snipping editor to modify screen shot image.
  • Select the screen shot border color.
  • Give option to save the screen capture image in PNG, JPG, GIF formats.

How to use Snipping Tool for screen capture:

Step 1: Click on Window Start button and type ‘Snipping Tool’ in search box of window start menu. See below screen shot.

snipping tool-1

Step 2: You will see the snipping tool window. See below screen shot.

snipping tool-2

Step 3: Click on ‘New’ button. See screen shot below.

snipping tool-3

Step 4: When you will click on ‘New’ button, it will come up with 4 options

  • Free-form snip
  • Rectangular snip
  • Window snip
  • Full screen snip

These options for you to take screen capture in desired format. Examples are shown later in this tutorial.

Step 5: Click on any of four options and select the area which you want to capture.

snipping tool-4

Step6: Take the screen shot and Snipping tool will open the screen shot in editor for further edit. See screen shot below.

snipping tool-5

Step 7: The Snipping Tool editor comes with some good editing options.

a) Send Snip – send the screen capture through email.

snipping tool-6

b) Pen – to write anything on screen shot, you can choose the color of pen with the customize option.

snipping tool-7

c) Highlighter – to highlight anything on screen shot, you can choose the color of highlight from customize option.

snipping tool-8

d) Eraser – erase portions of the recent edit on screen shot.

snipping tool-9

Step 8: The Snipping tool also has an ‘option tab’ to configure some of settings.  See screen shot below. Also note that if you want to high-light the border of screen shot then you have to check the ‘show selection ink‘ tab.

snipping tool-10

snipping tool-11

Details about new button options:

Free-Form Snip:  This option will let you choose any design for screen shot  for example you can choose circle shape to take screen shot or any design which you can draw from hand.

snipping tool-12

Rectangular Snip: This option will let you take screen shot in rectangular shape.

snipping tool-13

Window Snip: This option will let you take screen shot of any window.

snipping tool-14

Full Screen snip: As its name suggests, this option will let you take screen shot of full screen; much like print-screen would.

Related Posts

Advertisement