How to add screen shots
to your technology handouts
with a Mac

by Alicia M. Bartol & Jennifer Zink

What's a screen shot?
 
f you're making a how-to packet that teaches computer skills, it's useful to include pictures of the steps as you go. You might want a picture of a Web page, your desktop, or an application window. These images assist the learners by giving visual examples of the tools or menus you use in your tutorial. The pictures in this article are examples of using "screen shots" to illustrate a tutorial. A screen shot is a picture of all or part of your screen. You can essentially "take a picture" of anything that appears on your desktop. After taking screen shots, you can insert these images into a word processed document. You will see a number of screen shots in this article. To make screen shots, you need the screen-capture shareware Flash-It, or another similar extension. You can download Flash-It or a similar application for either Mac or PC by following the links at the end of this article.

Capturing an Image

o begin, you need to create and save an image to your hard drive. Saving an image to your computer is called "capturing" the image. For example, if you want to take a picture of the menu bar in a word processing program, follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Word or any word processing program. You should see the menu bar across the top of the screen.
• Simultaneously hold down the shift, apple, and 4 keys. Your cursor will turn in to a small cross, called a cross hair. You will use this cross hair to create a user-defined box around the area of the screen you want to capture.
• For this example, place the cross hair to the left of the word file. Click and hold your mouse and drag it until a box appears around the part of the screen you want to capture. In the image below, the red arrow points to the cross hair, which has been dragged across the screen while depressing the mouse button.

• When you have made a box around the portion of the screen you want, as we did above, let go of the mouse button. If the volume is turned up, you'll hear something akin to a camera shutter. For the above example, the resulting screen shot looks like this:

Where did the image go?

ow you have captured, or taken a picture of a particular part of the screen. You need to know where the image has been saved, and what it is called, so that you can insert it into a word processing document. Your computer will save this image as a MacPaint file, with the filename "Picture 1" within your hard drive. The hard drive on a Mac is usually visible on your desktop, often in the top, right-hand corner. If you want to preview the image file you just created, before including it in a handout, follow these directions.

• Double click on your hard drive. This opens the drive and lets you see all of the files and folders within it. It will look similar to the example below.

• Scroll down until you find the MacPaint file "Picture 1". Notice the icon next to it. This is a visual indicator that "Picture1" is a graphic file, rather than a folder or a document file. To preview this file, double click on the icon and the file will open.

Inserting the image into your handout

ou've now captured the image, you know where to find it, and you know what it is called. The next step is to actually put it into your document. You complete this step using your word processor. If you do not already have a word processor open, open one now. In this example, we will use Microsoft Word. To insert your screen shot into a document:

• First open the document in which you want the image to appear.
• In that document, place the cursor where you would like your image to be inserted.
• Click on the Insert menu at the top of the screen. A drop down menu will appear. The cursor may turn in to a little hand while you are in this menu. Please see the image below for an example.
• Click on Picture > From File ... .

nce you click on the Picture > From File ... command, a dialog box will appear. In this window you will look for, or "browse" for your saved image. The portion of the computer that you are looking in, whether this is the hard drive, the desktop, or a file folder, will appear in a grey bar at the top of the dialog box. In the image below, the computer is browsing the Desktop directory.

To insert your screen-shot however, you'll have to change directories so that you are in the Hard Drive.

• First, double click on your Hard Drive icon.
• Scroll down and highlight Picture 1. Again, you can look for the MacPaint icon next to it.
• Click Open. Your image should now appear inside your document where the cursor was.

ow you know how to make a screen shot and insert it into a word processed document. It's likely, however, that you'll want to use more than one image in your handouts. You can make as many screen shots as you like; they'll all be saved automatically to your hard drive with names like Picture 1, Picture 2, and Picture 3. With numerous screenshots, you will probably want to rename the MacPaint files, so that you know what each picture really is. Renaming a file is easy. Simply open the hard drive, scroll down to the file, and click once on the text -- not the icon. As you can see in the image below, this highlights the text and lets you type in a new filename.

In the above example, the user has kept the "Picture" prefix in the name. This keeps all the screen shots together, because the files and folders in the hard drive are listed alphabetically.

     Another way to keep screen shots together is to create a new folder for the MacPaint files. To create a new folder on your desktop, click on your desktop and then go to File > New Folder. An untitled folder will appear on the desktop. To move your screen shots into this folder, open your hard drive, and locate the files. Then select the MacPaint files by clicking and dragging your mouse around the filenames, as you see in the image below.

Then simply drag the files into the new folder you have created on your desktop.

     The last way to organize your image files is to save them automatically to a folder other than the hard drive. To do this, use the advanced options of Flash-It by taking the screen shot by holding down the shift, apple, and 5 keys -- rather than the regular shift, apple, 4 action. By using shift, apple, 5, you can save the file wherever you want, name it immediately, send it to the printer, or put it in your clipboard. After you take the shot, a dialog box will appear with these choices.

How do I include the cursor in a screen shot?

n some cases, you may want to include the cursor in your screen shot. For example, you may want your handout to show the pointing hand that appears, or the cursor as a cross hair. The cursor comes in many forms, each with its own function.

Normally, when you use the shift, apple, 4 or shift, apple, 5 options, a cross hair appears that lets you define the part of the screen you want to capture. This prevents you from capturing the cursor however, as we've done many times in the images for this article. To capture the cursor, you have to create a true screen shot -- the whole screen. To do this, use the shift, apple, and 3 keys. If you don't want your final image to show the whole screen, you can always crop the image in a graphics program like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop. Again, with the shift, apple, 3 option, MacPaint files are saved to your hard drive.

     You now know the basic and advanced features of Flash-It, a common screen-capture extension. Congratulations! Now you can make illustrated technology handouts on any of the programs or skills your students need. As we know from trying to learn new technologies with text-heavy user manuals ... a picture is worth a thousand words.

What you need and where to get it

here are numerous screen-capture extensions that you can use to assist you in technical documentation. Although Flash-it is very popular, it is not the only extension available. Here are some of your choices:

For the Mac

• Flash-It
• Pixs
• Snapz
• Snapz Pro

For the PC

• PhotoImpact Screen Capture
• SnagIt