| Taking Tutorial Screenshots |
|
|
|
If you've been around Photoshop communities for a while you'll have probably read through many tutorials and noticed screenshots being used to illustrate techniques, results, etc. You may have also asked yourself how these screenshots were captured. Well, with this tutorial you'll find the answers to your questions!
Step 1: As with any design tutorial, you'll have a specific program opened and being used to generate the end results. What you need to do is capture your current actions in an image so that you can then place them on a tutorial page. Say, for example, that I'm doing a tutorial using Photoshop. I would have Photoshop open and prepare the first step of whatever design I'm working on. When I have my first step prepared, I hit Alt + Print Screen on my keyboard. This copies your screen to memory/clipboard.
I use Photoshop to crop my screenshots. So whilst still in Photoshop, press CTRL + N on the keyboard to open a new document. Because you have your screenshot saved in memory, Photoshop will autmatically fill in the height/width details to reflect the size of the screenshot in your clipboard. Click Ok, and then hit CTRL + V to paste in your screenshot:

Step 2: As you can see, the entire screen was captured. We don't need all of that, so crop out the part that you want by using the Crop Tool to highlight the area that you want to save.
Step 3: Once your selection is complete, double-click on the highlighted area - this should leave you with everything inside the area you just selected:

Step 4: We could keep the image like this, but I don't like the gray area that's still left, so let's get rid of that. To do this, use the Magic Wand Tool to click anywhere inside the gray area - this will form a selection of the entire grey area:

Step 5: Now right click on the gray area and choose Select Inverse. This will select just the screenshot alone:

Step 6: Go to Image > Crop and you'll have yourself a nice screenshot to use on your tutorial page!

You may notice the top corners still have some gray showing. You can use the Magic Wand Tool to select the gray and then hit DELETE to get rid of the gray if it bothers you!
Alternative Method
Another technique for creating screenshots involves changing our proceses above at step 4. After using the Magic Wand Tool to select the gray area, hit DELETE on the keyboard to get the following:

You can now trim off the transparent pixels by selecting Image > Trim from the main menu with the following options:

And there you go, two great ways to create nice screenshots for tutorials! Enjoy!
|
- Tutorial written by Jacorre
| 
|
|
|
Quote from jefe317;31372: Some OS let you simply press the PrtSc button and it doesn't require the Alt button. :) |
The difference is that if you press the Alt button+PrtSc you will get a screen shot of only the active program. If you press the PrtSc button without the Alt button, you get the entire screen with whatever other programs may be open and visible. (a little less to crop out if you aren't looking to include the other windows, but handy if you do.) |
Reply to this post |
|
|
Hi
I have Windows OS with Vista Home Basic and to record an image of the current screen I press Function (Fn) + Print Screen (Prt Sc) not Alt + Prt Sc :) |
Reply to this post |
User: Popple (#35324)
Date: Mon Dec 04, 2006. 09:21:40 | Post #2 of 4 |
|
Hi,
There are also the following ways to get screenshots for Mac users (I don't know if they work on PC's) :
Command+Shift+3 to get a screenshot of the total screen.
Command+Shift+4 : there is a cross sign showing up that gives you the opportunity to select what you want on the screen.
And you can work on the image in Photoshop if you like. |
Reply to this post |
User: jefe317 (#31372)
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006. 01:01:30 | Post #1 of 4 |
|
Some OS let you simply press the PrtSc button and it doesn't require the Alt button. :) |
Reply to this post |
--- View Entire Thread ---
|

|
|
 |
TrentonCS Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 06th, 7:40pm Activity: 1 replies, 19 views
|  | Html 5 Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 05th, 1:32pm Activity: 5 replies, 85 views
|  | What are your favorite websites? Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 05th, 12:51am Activity: 0 replies, 45 views
|  | What do you do for a living? Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 04th, 11:04pm Activity: 0 replies, 43 views
|  | What is your favorite Subway sandwich? Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 04th, 11:02pm Activity: 4 replies, 84 views
|  | Windows 7 Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 04th, 10:59pm Activity: 0 replies, 47 views
|  | Google Wave Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 04th, 10:52pm Activity: 0 replies, 57 views
|  | University Project Author: Gjbphp Posted: Nov 03rd, 8:59pm Activity: 1 replies, 89 views
|  | Hello BioRust! Author: ahstanford Posted: Nov 02nd, 5:39pm Activity: 4 replies, 84 views
|  | Illustrator cs4 - Convert outlines/graphics to ... Author: izidrew Posted: Oct 29th, 3:48pm Activity: 3 replies, 252 views
|  | Hello BioRust!! Author: MOST Posted: Oct 29th, 12:52am Activity: 4 replies, 142 views
|  | Hey! newbie Author: prelimiting Posted: Oct 28th, 11:51pm Activity: 1 replies, 112 views
|  |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| --- Site Resources --- |
| Total Tutorials: | 212 |
| Total Downloads: | 415 |
| Linkbase Links: | |
 |
|
 |
 |
|