Back in the old days when DOS ruled the world, the Print Screen key on your keyboard actually did what you’d expect - it would spit a page out of your printer with all the information that appeared on the screen. This was handy. It meant that if you needed some bit of information you were looking at, to use in another program or in the real world, you didn’t have to resort to pen and paper. Today, it’s not as simple. The Print Screen key doesn’t print the screen. But it does do something useful - it puts an image of the screen in the Clipboard. This shows you how to take a snapshot of the screen in Windows 7, save it as a file on your hard drive, and, yes, even print it, if you like. Once you have your screen ready for capture, do the following:
1. Hit the Print Screen key on your keyboard (it may be labeled PrtScn or Print Scr or some other variation). This doesn’t appear to do anything, but Windows 7 has just snapped a picture of your screen as it looks right now and put that picture in the clipboard.
2. Select Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint to launch Paint.
3. In Paint, select Edit > Paste. A picture of your screen as it appeared when you hit Print Screen appears. You’ll only be able to see the upper-left corner, but you can use the scroll bars to see that the rest of it is there.
4. Choose File > Save As from the Paint menu. The Save As dialog appears.
5. Click on the Save as Type drop-down list box. Select the file type you want to use to save the image.
6. Navigate to the location where you want the image stored on your hard drive, give the image a name, and click the Save button. Your image is saved.
7. To print the image on your printer, simply choose File > Print from the Windows 7 Paint menu.
There’s only one thing to do: Create your own! That’s what I ’ll show you how to do.
1. Select Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint to launch Paint.
2. From the Paint menu, choose Image > Attributes. The Attributes dialog appears. Be sure the Units (in the middle of the dialog) is set to Pixels. Type 32 for both Width and Height. Click OK.
3. Choose View > Zoom > Custom... to display the Custom Zoom dialog. Choose 800% . Click OK.
4. Choose View > Zoom > Show Grid. A grid of lines appears.
5. Choose View > Zoom > Show Thumbnail. A small Thumbnail window appears with a small white box inside it. Move the window so that it’s in a convenient spot beside the grid. The Thumbnail window shows what your icon will look like at its actual size.
6. Draw your masterpiece! You can use all of Paint’s drawing, painting, text, and color tools just as you normally would. Since you are zoomed in and the grid is on, working with individual pixels is relatively easy. And as you make changes on the grid, you’ll see them appear in the thumbnail immediately.
7. Choose File > Save As... The Save As dialog appears. Find the location on your hard drive where you want the file stored and type a name. Add an .ico after the filename you type, like this: myicon.ico. This ensures that the file extension is .ico, rather than the usual .bmp.
8. The file is saved. The ICO file will use itself as its icon, so you can use Explorer to go to the spot on your hard drive where you saved the file to see what it looks like.
Paint is a very cool little application, considering it comes free with Windows 7. This demonstrates some of its most commonly used features.
1. Launch Paint. The Paint window appears. A white box appears in the center of the window. This is the piece of paper you’ll be drawing on. If you look closely, you’ll see dots at the corners of the white box. These allow you to resize the page.
2. Move your mouse pointer over the dot near the lower-right corner of the white box. The pointer changes to a double arrow. Press and hold the left mouse button, and move the mouse to resize the white box. You can see the size in pixels displayed in the status bar.
3. Click on the Pencil icon in the toolbar on the left. When you move your mouse pointer around in the white box, it looks like a pencil. When you press the left mouse button, it presses the pencil down onto the paper and you begin to draw. You can draw freehand shapes of all kinds using the pencil.
4. Down at the bottom of the window is a Color Box. On the left you see two boxes that overlap each other. This identifies the foreground and background colors. To the right you see lots of little squares of color. Click on your favorite color, and the foreground box changes to that color. Now when you draw again with your Pencil, you are drawing in the color you selected.
5. Click on the Brush icon in the toolbar on the left. Now your mouse pointer looks like a crosshair. When you press the left mouse button and move the mouse, you find yourself drawing with a thicker line. You can also change your brush’s color using the Color Box at the bottom of the Window, just as you did with the Pencil.
6. If you need to clear the page, select the Eraser icon in the toolbar on the left. Now when you draw over lines, they are erased. To clear the entire page, select Image > Clear Image.
7. Click the Line button to draw a straight line. Go to where you want to start the line, then press and hold the left mouse button. Now move the pointer where you’d like to end the line, release the button, and the line is drawn. If you immediately press the left mouse button again, you can draw another straight line that begins where the last one ended.
8. The Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, and Ellipse all work the same way: Press and hold the left mouse button where you want the topleft corner to be, drag the mouse down to where you want the bottom-right corner to be, and release the button.
9. In Windows 7 click the Text button in the toolbar. Now use the same technique you used in the last step to draw a rectangle. A dotted rectangle appears with a flashing cursor in it. You can type any text you like here. You may also notice that a floating Fonts window containing a toolbar appears. This toolbar allows you to change the font, size, and style for the text.
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