Images are an essential part of any online document. They can be used to clarify, provide details and inspire your audience. Screen captures are customized images that you create from the contents on your computer screen. In order for these to work effectively, they must be created properly from the beginning. Below are some tips that I use for making my screen captures.
- Tip #1: Keep the screen at a readable size in relation to the image size.When making screen captures from the Web, I like to magnify my screen text and then make the screen capture. This way, the essential content on the screen will be more clear. If I'm creating a screen capture inside of a program, I use the Zoom feature in that program and then take the screen capture.
- Tip #2: Maintain the aspect ratio of the captured image and the resulting pasted image.
When you capture your image, your copied image will have a certain height, width and resolution. When you copy the image to some programs such as MS Word, your image may lose resolution primarily from being pasted into tighter spaces. For instance, I once clipped an image from my Moodle course website and then copied the image over to MS Word. When coming over to Word, the image blurred. Take a look -
- 1) Here is my image clipped from my course website. (Click on the image.)
- 2) Here is the same image pasted into MS Word. See how it blurred.
(Click on the image.)
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3) What I did: In these cases, it is best to resize the image to its original size. For instance, in MS Word this option can be activated by double-clicking on the image. The option you want to use is under Reset Picture-->Reset Picture & Size. (Click on the image.)
- Tip #3: When clipping the screen, capture as small as area as possible.
If you are capturing small text such as that in software menus, you will need to first enlarge the screen in your browser or software program (tip #1). Then, you will need to create a "tight" clip of the screen around that text. I've practiced this many times and found that this strategy works better than just capturing the entire screen.
The biggest downside of capturing the entire screen is that you end up capturing the text you want along with all the extra stuff on the screen. This actually makes the text look smaller. Also, capturing the entire screen creates large files that download slower. So, clipping exactly what you want on the screen is the way to go.
Also, consider putting images together. This is easily done if you clip the screen to save the captures you want. Then, cascade them to present them. This works well when you are showing a process. See my example below that I've used many times before.
Example: I wanted to do a screen capture that would show the process of creating a discussion forum in Moodle. So, I created 4 separate screen captures by first zooming in my Moodle screen and then clipping the screen with SnagIt. Then, I pasted each image over to MS Paint. I cascaded the images and labeled them as steps with red text and circles. Finally, I saved the image in MS Paint as a JPG file.
Here's how it came out: (Click on the image.)
To summarize, remember that when you are creating screen captures, you want the images as clear and readable as possible. It takes some practice but you will develop some strategies that fit your own work flow that you use everyday. Take a look at my other article on screen capture tools.
Resources I recommend:
- Techsmith's SnagIt
($49.95 non-academic version) OR ($29.95 academic version) - Microsoft Office 2010 ($115.75)
(*It's cheaper to just get the entire package instead of MS Word and MS PowerPoint alone)
- Microsoft Office 2013 ($139.00)
(* This is the newer version...I actually like the 2010 but thought I'd just add the latest version)
