Screen Captures

[the joe]

I want to design a training program for elderly folks who have never used a computer before. I've been working in teaching computers to the elderly for months now, and I feel a visually based "book" that has screen captures to help give them directions would be really helpful. Do you guys have any good ideas for how I can go about getting the screen caps I want?

Here's what I'm trying to accomplish:

I want a screen capture of internet explorers home page. This is the first thing the user sees when starting explorer and if I had a picture of this it would help. I could then highlight the address bar and give directions: "In the bar indicated in this picture, enter the address of the site you want to visit (ie yahoo.com etc.).

This may not be the place to post this, but I figured I'd start here and maybe you guys can direct me to a more appropriate medium. Thanks.

joe

[guiblum]

Fire up Internet Explorer and get the home page showing, then hit the PrintScrn key.

That copies an image of whatever is on the screen into the clipboard.

Then open Paint or any other graphics editor and paste that image onto a blank canvas.

Then "save" or "save as" in an appropriate file format.

[carsey]

Hi,

The way to make a screenshot is to look on your keyboard for a button called PrtScn, on some Keyboards it is written out is full, Print Screen.

Then, after this button is pressed, what you seen on the screen is copied and stored until you implement it into some editing software, such as paint or Photoshop.

To paste the screenshot on photo editors, either go to Edit > Paste or press Ctrl + V on the Keyboard. This should allow you to edit the screenshot in any way.

You can take 'active screenshots' of a window that does not fill the entire screen, but it is active shown with the bright blue bar instead of a darker one (inactive). To do this, we Press the Alt Key on the keyboard at the same time as we press Print screen. We then paste it into a editing program as mentioned above.

To highlight a certain area, sometimes I make a yellow rectangle on photoshop as a new layer, and lower the opacity so the image below is shown aswell.

But if you use something such as paint, this can be done by using the Rectangle tool to simply make a rectangle around a chosen area in red or another color.

Hope this helps,

Chris

[gistek]

I use the Alt-Prt Screen so my readers won't be distracted by other stuff on the screen - like the Start Button and System Tray

You can then paste it directly into your Word document or past it into Paint, Irfanview, or any other application. If you want an image file that you will be able to use over and over, paste into an image processor (Paint, Irfanview, PhotoShop, etc.) and save it without modifying it. Then you can crop out sections, add overlays, or do other modifications and save the results in new files.

Remember, too, you can set the word wrapping so the text in your manual wraps around your image. I've created several manuals this way. It's fun, but somewhat time consuming. Since your target group is older, don't use anything smaller than 12pt font.

[Go The Power]

This is my 'prepared speech' that i use when I ask a user for a print screen it might help..

To post a screen shot please follow these steps....

How to take a screen shot.

• <<<<INSERT>>>>>>>.
• Look on your keyboard and there should be a button (usually in the top right corner) that reads PrtSc, press that button.

** Please Note: If you cant find the button, here is a picture of a basic keyboard, and look at the key with the red squares around it. Click
Here (Click on the Blue link) to view the Picture. **

• Once the PrtSc button is pressed, Open up Microsoft Paint.

1. Click Start,
2. Click Run
3. Type in MSpaint,
4. Press Ok.

• Once Paint is open, On the Menu bar click on Edit
• Then Paste.
• Save the file to your computer as a Jpeg image (Mainly so the size is not so big)

On the menu bar click File,
Click Save as..
Next to Save as type click the drop arrow, and choose Jpeg
Then click Save.