Thread: Windows screengrab basics

The PrtScr key copies the contents of your video Ram to the clipboard. As I said earlier, one of the major drawbacks of PrtScr is that in most circumstances, it doesn't display the cursor. It also copies the whole screen. But if you hold down the Alt Key while pressing PrtScr, only the active window is captured to the clipboard, which can be useful for capturing dialogue boxes and the like.



Windows Vista includes a Snipping Tool you can use to capture the entire screen, selected windows and rectangular and freehand selections. You'll find it on your Start menu in Programs, Accessories. When the Snipping tool is active, Ctrl & PrtScr starts the capture process. A preview window with some crude drawing tools shows the captured area, which you can save as a PNG, GIF, JPEG or HTML page.