The Screen Capture Trick (more of a tutorial, actually!)
(and there's some free software for you as well!)

One of my Marketing Update subscribers asked me how she could get an image off her eBook PDF (which had been created for her) and on to her website. Now this situation can arise quite frequently, and it can, along with similar situations, be solved quite easily.

You use some screen capture software. Basically, this software allows you to grab all or part of your screen and save it as an image file. A lot of graphics software (such as Paintshop Pro) has screen capture built in to it.

But, if you haven't got any screen capture facility, I'm going to get you to download a little bit of software called "Screen Shoot It" from this page.    

I'm giving it you free of charge, but if you feel like making a donation to me, there's a PayPal donations button down below :-)

Here's some detailed instructions on using "Screen Shoot It". I'll use a PDF as an example, but it could be anything on your screen.

1) Fire up "Screen Shoot It". When you download it and take it out of the zip file, the interface looks like this:

2) Minimise this, and then get in front of you the Window you want to capture. It could be a PDF, a web page - anything. I'll use this PDF as an example:

3) Now let's suppose we want to grab the eCover on the PDF. So restore "Screen Shoot It" so that it's over the top of the window you want to grab - in this case, the PDF:

Now you can start to use the "Screen Shoot It" options.

4) Before you capture the screen, you need to tell the software where you want to save the screen capture image, and what file name you want to give it.

5) Click on the Browse button to open up a dialogue box to navigate to where you want to save the image:

Select the folder - remember where it is! - and click "OK". I've lost count of the number of times that people (often my wife!) have forgotten where they've saved something!

6) Next, choose a name for the image file:

You don't need to enter the file type. "Screen Shoot It" automatically saves it as a JPEG (.jpg) file

7) With all that information selected and entered (you did remember where you're saving the image file, didn't you?), you now need to decide what you're going to capture:

a) The whole screen: "Screen Shoot It" grabs everything that is on your computer monitor. I often find this is the quickest way, because I can then use my image editing software (I use Paintshop Pro) to crop the part of the screen I want. When you've selected this option, click on the "Capture" button to save the screep capture image to your chosen folder.

b) The active window: In our example, this would be the visible part of the PDF file. When you've selected this option, click on the "Capture" button to save the screep capture image to your chosen folder.

c) Selection: If you choose this option, when you click on the "Capture" button, a cross-hair cursor is displayed. Move the cursor to the top-left part of what you want to capture. Then hold the left mouse button down and drag it to the bottom-right of the area you want to capture. The capture area shows as a red dotted line like this:

Then release the mouse button and the selected area is then captured and the image file is saved. You might then need to crop the image further in your graphics program

And that's just about it! So, here's the download link to the software. Right-click on the link and select "Save target as.." - and remember where you've saved it :-)

Right-Click Here To Download
(It's Windows Only software inside a zip file - download file size 333 Kb)

And if you want to thank me for the software - and these detailed instructions - here's a PayPal donations button. Click on it to pay me anything you like, using either your PayPal account or your credit card:

Thanks! And I hope that you've found this tutorial / webmasters trick useful, and that you also find this neat little screen capture device to be helpful

Ethical Warning

Screen capture, like uranium, can be used for good or evil! Do not use screen capture to steal other people's images from their websites. Apart from giving you bad Karma, the webmaster might come after you! I've threatened a few people with dire legal consequences because they stole from my website images which I had created - or even worse, had paid to have created.

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By the way, if you need some free image editing software, here's a couple of suggestions:

IrfanView
The Gimp

And if you want to have an inexpensive and huge array of graphics tools at your disposal, you'll find them in my:

CheatKit Graphics Wizard