All of us have their fair share of working with images. Windows 7 offers an easy to use tool for taking complex screenshots called Snipping Tool, that is available in the Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions. In this tutorial I will talk about how to take screenshots using this utility. I will show you how to save, edit or email your capture, how to use Markup Tools and how to change the settings of the application.

Where to Find the Snipping Tool

Windows 7 offers numerous ways to get to the Snipping Tool application. You can go to Start Menu, choose the Accessories folder and then select Snipping Tool.

The second way is to type the word “snipping" in the search box of the Start Menu and choose Snipping Tool.

How to Make a Custom Screenshot

The main window that will open is has three important buttons. The New button allows you to select the type of screenshot that you want to make. The Cancel button enables you to cancel the current action and choose another one. Last but not least comes the Options button which allows you to customize the application.

There are four types of captures that the New button offers:

• The Free-form Snip will enable you to draw an irregular line around an object or area.
• The Rectangular Snip will allow you to take a screenshot shaped as a rectangle by dragging the cursor around an object.
• Window Snip allows you to select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box that you want to capture.
• Full-screen Snip enables you to capture the entire screen, just like the old-fashioned Print Screen key.

Now let's see how you can capture a part of your Desktop using Free-form Snip. First of all select Free-form Snip from the drop down menu and then choose the area that you want to cut.

You can easily select the area that interests you by clicking and dragging your cursor to select an area to copy. As you drag, the selected area will be darker, and surrounded by a red border (if you are using the default options).

When you release the mouse button, the captured area is automatically copied to the mark-up window, where you can annotate, save or share the snip.

This window offers some useful tools for editing the capture you took. For example, if you are not satisfied with the quality of the picture you can always make a new one using New Snip button. Before saving your screenshot, you can use the 'Pen and Highlighter' tools from the Snipping Tool toolbar to add markup to your capture. The Eraser tool will remove marks made with the Pen and Highlighter Tools.

To save the snip just press the Save Snip button, select the location, complete the file's name and choose the file type: PNG, GIF JPEG or HTML and press the Save button.

NOTE: If you want to find out more about file types, I recommend file-extensions.org.

You may email a capture without saving it by using the 'Send Snip' button on the Snipping Tool toolbar. This will offer you two options: 'E-mail Recipient' and 'E-mail Recipient (as attachment)'.

NOTE: For using this option you need to have an account configured in your default email program. In case you don't have an email address configured, I suggest saving the screenshot as an image and then sending it using your web-based email accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail.

How to Customize the Snipping Tool

When you start the Snipping Tool you can click on the Options button to set the preferences on how you want the program to operate.

You will also be able to access this feature after you have taken a screenshot with the help of the Tools menu that you will find in the application's toolbar.

The options are broken up into Application and Selections groups.
The Application area has a set of checkboxes that enable you to make the following changes:

• 'Hide Instruction Text' allows to hide the instruction text in the main Snipping Tool window.
• 'Always copy snips to the Clipboard' enables you to copy all captures to your Windows clipboard so you can paste them into another application such as word processors or image editors.
• 'Include URL below snips (HTML only)' offers you the possibility to save your snip as a Single File HTML, or MHT document, and if the snip was taken from an Internet Explorer browser window it will show the URL of the webpage from which you took the picture from.
• 'Prompt to save snips before exiting' will give you a heads up if you have any captures that you have not saved, thus ensuring that none of your work would be lost.
• 'Display icon in the Quick Launch Toolbar' will place an icon on your Quick Launch Toolbar offering a quick access to the application.
• 'Show screen overlay' if enabled, when you are creating the snip the Snipping Tool interface will disappear.

The second section, called Selection Options, allows you to make some settings regarding color palette :

• 'Ink Color' changes the color of the selection border when you create a snip.
• 'Show selection ink after snips are captured' - when enabled, the selection border will be shown, using the color selected in the 'Ink Color' option, around the snip.

My suggestion is to enable all the options except 'Include URL below snips (HTML only)' and 'Show screen overlay when Snipping Tool is active'. For better looking snips just disable 'Show selection ink after snips are captured' to remove border around the window snip.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to use Windows 7's Snipping Tool, the coast is clear for you to take great looking captures of your favorite applications and even your desktop. If you have any questions or tips to share, feel free leave a comment.

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