Posting non .jpg images from your computer screen

[Random Orbital Bob]

One of my friends on the forum recently asked how to post diagrams on the forum when they don't conform to the forum software permissible files (ie jpg's)

I thought it worth posting my method because it seemed relevant to a wider audience. It's doubtless been posted before or indeed other methods but I guess this cant hurt. What I like about this method is it will convert anything you can get on your computers screen to be a postable image here. Diagrams, spreadsheets, word files, sketchup files.....it doesn't matter what the source software is and its all free because the conversion utilities are all shipped with Windows. (Sorry Mac users, you may need to add your method because I have a Mac but only for music).

Summary is:

- Capture the image in snipping tool
- paste it into paint and save as a .PNG file format. That format can be uploaded here just like a normal .jpg photo.

Here's slightly more detail pasted from my response to the chap who pm'd me:

The forum SW is rather restrictive in the great variety of file formats including pretty much all normal office documents ie xls and docx files from Excel and Word as well as pdf. You know....pretty much what everyone wants beyond jpg!!!

So my method is to complete the document in whatever the source product is (word, excel, drawing package etc) and then I screengrab the finished image using the snipping tool that ships free with windows. I then boot paint (also free with windows) and paste (ctrl-v) that cut image directly into paint. You then use the "save as" function and make sure you specify the .png file format as well as the name of course. That png file format will render here on the forum in exactly the same way as your normal jpg would. Bit laborious but once you've set it up and gone through the procedure a couple of times it works a treat

Hope that helps

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

I think you can skip a step - on my PC running Win7 there's a "Save as" in the snipping tool itself, so you can save as a JPG without the Paint stage.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

even better

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

And to prove it works...

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

the snipping tool is buried in the accessories folder by the way for those who haven't used it.....so for Win 7 users.....start>all programmes>accessories>snipping tool

I took the snipping tool icon and place it in my taskbar so its visible all the time and just one click to access when capturing the screen. When you boot it the whole screen goes opaque and a cross hair tool is tied to the mouse movement. Just left click the mouse and drag while clicking to surround the section of screen you want. Once you let go the mouse button it has copied that real estate to the clipboard. Go to the file menu in the snipping tool and "save as" a PNG file to wherever you put things your hard disk and upload that file to the forum as if it were a photo in jpg format.

 

[Zeddedhed]

If you're using a Mac hold down Command Shift 4 and a set of crosshairs will appear. click and drag to select the area you want and when you release the button it'll save an image to your pictures folder.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Thanks for that Zed, even easier on a Mac (as if we weren't to expect that )

You can also just hit the print screen button on your keyboard to capture the entire screen for then pasting into paint or if you hit alt-print screen it will only capture the active window to the clipboard. Frankly, the simplest method is the snipping tool.

 

[CHJ]

Bit more difficult to do this though with a couple of clicks.

Admittedly it's not free.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

now you're just showing off

 

[finneyb]

And the snipping tool in Windows 10 is still in Accessories - except some bright spark has called in Windows Accessories ie filed under 'W' rather than 'A'. It took an age to find the snipping tool.

Brian

 

[nev]

or
the print screen button on the keyboard (PR SCR ) pastes a copy of the screen onto the clipboard, then open any (?) graphics program like paint or gimp and create a new doc and select Paste, crop if desired and save.

edit: forgot that in linux mint print screen actually saves a screenshot as a png in the pictures folder. so the press of one or two keys, job done

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

the software company I ran had a very bright developer who wrote a simple utility in about 1995 so that any Windows user simply hit alt and an F key (which one escapes me now) and it brought up the same cross hairs that the snipping tool does. The great advantage was you didn't need to boot any application for this to work, it was running in the background all the time and taking zero machine resources. A brilliant little program that I've always harboured a secret belief that Microsoft ripped off and which eventually became the snipping tool. There was a fair run through the 90's when Microsoft became rather infamous in the industry for finding a company with cool software in a market they were interested in (Netscape being the classic) and then finding an excuse to "trial it with a view to buying". Meanwhile, the seller (software vendor) would be rubbing their hands with glee thinking they were about to land the huge global Microsoft account only to find about 18 months later (after buying nothing) MS would have released a competitive version of their product for about 1/10th the price. All the features would be awfully similar but called different things. This is all alleged of course

That snipping tool may of course have co-evolved as it is a fairly obvious thing to do. But it's only obvious after you've seen a brilliant original version of it working really well, as was the case of our's.

 

[Benchwayze]

If I have scanned a drawing, I can import the scan into Photoshop, to save the file as any image format I wish.
Photoshop can save most images into any other different format.
I can also 'printscreen' to import into Photoshop as a 'New File' and again save it as I wish. This can be done even with files from which you are barred right-clicking. (if you see what I mean!)
No I don't do it regularly. 8) I discovered it using my own website, when I realised I couldn't download copies of my own work, without going into the site editing suite.