I knew about the Snipping Tool in Windows, but for some reason I never thought much about it until recently when a friend reminded me when he heard all the steps I was going though to get a screen capture. I was answering a question from StackOverflow, and I was trying to show some XAML output, so here is what I did to capture the output:
- Take a screen shot by pressing Alt+Print Screen (captures the active window to the clipboard)
- Open a graphics application (Paint.NET or Photoshop)
- Paste the clipboard contents into a new document
- Crop to the section of the screen I want to capture
- Save results to a file
- Insert file into my response
The same process using the Snipping Tool in Windows goes like this:
- Open Snipping Tool
- Select screen area I want to capture (the selection is inserted into the clipboard automatically if that is all you need)
- Save results to file
- Insert file into my response
Ah, much better. This may not sound like a lot of savings, but it takes away the feeling of having to work to get what I want. There is a much better chance of me taking time to grab a capture when I know that it is this simple, and that increases the quality of my communications and gives me a greater chance of being understood. The next time you need to capture something from your screen, don’t forget the Snipping Tool.