Whether providing tech support to a friend, writing professional tutorials, or shooting videos for YouTube, screen capture is the name of the game.
How to make screenshots on a PC
On a Windows PC, hit the Print Screen key; the screenshot ends up in your clipboard. Start an app such as Photoshop (or Paint, in a pinch), unload your clipboard, crop to your heart’s content, and save the file.
How to make screenshots on a Mac
On an Apple Mac running OS X, hit Command-Shift-3 to capture the entire screen (or all screens, when using multiple monitors). The screenshot ends up as a .PNG file on your sorry desktop. In order for your screenshot to go to the Clipboard instead of a file on your desktop, hold the Control key in addition to whatever key combination you were already using to capture the screen.
If you want to crop the screenshot while shooting, press Command-Shift-4. The mouse pointer will change to a crosshair pointer. Click and drag the mouse across the screen (or tap and glide your finger across the trackpad) to indicate the area you want to capture, the release (if you hit Escape, you will cancel the operation). You can use Shift, Option, or Space as modifier keys. Look for a .PNG file on your desktop.
To take a screenshot of a window on a Mac, press Command-Shift-4, and when the cursor turns into a crosshair pointer, hit the Space bar, then click on the window you wanted to capture. The screenshot will be saved as a .PNG file on your desktop.
If you wanted to capture a menu, click on it to open up, then press Command-Shift-4. When the pointer assumes the form of crosshairs, drag to select the menu. If, instead of dragging, you decided to hit Space, you would capture the menu without its title command.
If you want more control over your screenshots and would like to capture video–for example video tutorials for YouTube–on a Mac, look no further than Snapz Pro X by Ambrosia Software. When they say “record anything”, they are not bragging.
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