Screenshot-posting for beginners

[Guest]

[gordon]

How to take a screenshot, upload it to a image-host &
post it on a Board ( like Comodo's Forum )

Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words.
Screenshots can be a great help when describing a problem
with for example Your network-rules .
 
Taking the screenshot :

First :
You should get a specialized program to take screenshots because
it is much more flexible than the built-in Windows " PrtScn " request
that only allows you to take a picture of the entire screen
(or "Alt+PrtScn" to capture the active window)
and by default uses an inferior file-format , BMP

Using a screen-shot program you can control exactly what to
capture and the file-format ( quality ) to save it in.

 I highly recommend the FREE program  " FastStone Capture "
available for free legal download here :
http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm

edit : From version 5.4 FastStone has changed the license to shareware.
You can download the latest version as a 30-day trial from the link above OR
get version 5.3 from here ( the license allows redistribution so it's still legal) :
http://www.portablefreeware.com/download.php?id=775

Another nice free alternative is Gadwin PrintScreen :
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/screenshotcaptor/index.html

Here is a screenshot showing You what FastStone looks like :

You can change the default hotkeys, save-directory,
file-format and other options by clicking " Settings "

 To take a screenshot of your network-rules, simply open
" Network monitor " so it is the active window and press " Shift + PrtScn " .
This will take the screenshot and open the image in " FastStone editor ".
Edit the image if You like, then save it  to somewhere You can remember !
You should save in either "PNG" (best quality), "GIF" or "JPEG"
(smaller file-size, acceptable quality) if you want to post the image on a board .
Never use the " BMP " format for on-line display, most boards will not accept  BMP .
 
Uploading your screenshot to a free image-hosting service :

 A image-hosting service allows you to upload a image (or images) to a server
and generates a URL (address) for each image.
You then provide the URL in your forum-post and the image is displayed in your post..
..or You could give the URL to friends/family and they could see Your holiday-pics by
entering the URL in their browser...
As you can see image-hosting can be used for many things ..
There are many different free hosting-services to choose from, these are just a few of them :

http://www.imageshack.us/
http://www.photobucket.com/
http://www.thesighost.com/
http://www.photojerk.com/

You will need to register an account with most hosting-services.

Imageshack is quite easy to use, provides " clickable thumbnails " ,
has a toolbar for IE-users and there is a great FireFox extension

Note : Some image-hosting services will "steal" the copyright to your images
and may use them for their own commercial purposes without compensating you .
Look for the smallest print in the user-agreement, that's where they usually inform you about that ! 

 
Posting Your image :
 
 Just write the post and insert ( copy&paste ) the URL for the image .
The URL's are usually pre-formatted so You don't need to click " insert image "
You can tell if the URL is pre-formatted by making sure it looks something like this :

Code:

[img]urltoyourimage [/img]

Remember to use the " preview post " function that most boards offer .
If your image doesn't show in the preview it's usually because the formatting of the URL is wrong,
most common problem is missing the [image] bb-code or that it's doubled ..

The Comodo-forum allows you to upload your image(s) to Comodos servers
so if you just need to post your image here you are spared the trouble of registering
with a image-host ..
Note that  most boards do not provide this convenient service; Just another sign of how
dedicated Comodo is to their "customers" (us) ! 
 
 Some boards may have rules for image-posting, always read the board-rules first !
Remember that images require bandwidth : Try to keep the file-size as small as possible
and image size at max. 640x480 or use clickable thumbnails for large images ..
People on low-bandwidth connections will appreciate this .. 

[Little Mac]

Thanks for that, Gordon.  Hopefully other users will find it helpful.

Also, with Comodo's forums, you are not limited to including the images in your post; you may attach the files to your post under Additional Options.  In this way you don't need web-hosting; you can do a direct upload to the forum. 

Additional Options is shown in bold red text under the textbox of each post you do (see attached screenshot); when you click that, it will provide a box where you can browse to your locally-saved file; if you need to upload more than one, click the "(more attachments)" for each attachment (see 2nd screenshot).

LM

[PapaSmurf]

Thank you very much for that. Now I have something else to play with...lol...I really have to sleep at some point...
I would just like to thank this forum, its admins and helpers for a very pleasant experience.
I have really picked up ALOT of information here, all of it clean and very useful.
My suggestion to others is simply to click into a section of the forum, any section, and just start reading. More and more doing that has led me to other ideas and ways of solving difficulties from with in my system. And of course, some of the links I have run into, (such as the ones in this thread), have really given my system all sorts of entertainment.
So, if you guys keep posting your ideas, I will keep reading them. 

[snyder]

How to take a screenshot, upload it to a image-host &
post it on a Board ( like Comodo's Forum )

Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words. Screenshots can be a great
help when describing a problem with for example Your network-rules .
 
Taking the screenshot :

 I highly recommend the FREE program  " FastStone Capture " available for
free legal download here : http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm
Here is a screenshot showing You what it looks like :

 

I agree with everything being said about a "picture is worth a thousand words", and in general about capturing screen/s for better clarity when dealing with issues.  However, I do have to disagree that "FastStone Capture" is free.  While it may be freely available for download, it is not a FREEWARE but instead it is a SHAREWARE.  It is free to be downloaded for an evaluation of 30 days, after which you will need to either buy or uninstall or else ... I don't know, will have to wait for 30 days to find out if it becomes crippled.  If anyone is looking for freeware please see this posting right here at this COMODO Forum.

http://forums.comodo.com/index.php?topic=1731.0

[Toggie]

If you don't wish to install an additional program to capture screen shots, you can easily use the PrintScreen function in Windows:

To capture the whole screen, simply press the PrintScrn button (just right of the F12 key)

This will create an image of everything on the entire screen. It then copies that image to the Windows clipboard.

Next, Go to the Start Menu/Run and type mspaint [press enter]
In mspaint, select Edit and then paste. (you can also use <ctrl + v>) You should see the image of your screen in the main window. At this point, you could edit the image, before saving.
Select the File menu, then 'Save As'
Give the file a name and from the 'Save as type', choose PNG
You now have a screen capture.

To select only the active window using this method, press the <Alt> key with PrintScrn.

[topmoxie]

Yeh but why use Fastone , most computers come with paint installed you can captur screen with it.

[Toggie]

See the post just above yours topmoxie!

[gordon]

I agree with everything being said about a "picture is worth a thousand words", and in general about capturing screen/s for better clarity when dealing with issues.  However, I do have to disagree that "FastStone Capture" is free.  While it may be freely available for download, it is not a FREEWARE but instead it is a SHAREWARE.  It is free to be downloaded for an evaluation of 30 days, after which you will need to either buy or uninstall or else ... I don't know, will have to wait for 30 days to find out if it becomes crippled.  If anyone is looking for freeware please see this posting right here at this COMODO Forum.

http://forums.comodo.com/index.php?topic=1731.0

They changed the license with version 5.4 ..
The last free FastStone capture was version 5.3 ..
"update" ? yeah right !!

M$ Paint ? it's a POS .

[snyder]

They changed the license with version 5.4 ..
The last free FastStone capture was version 5.3 ..
"update" ? yeah right !!

M$ Paint ? it's a POS .

I had completely forgotten about this screen-capture utility.  It is really neat, especially the scrolling window.  I just found out today that after the 30 day trail period you have only three choices (really two) buy or uninstall.  I'll stay with Wisdom-Soft Screen Hunter Free, it is limited but works for me.

[Little Mac]

There are other free utilities for this purpose.  One I know of is HoverSnap, by the folks that do RegSeeker.  No time limits or anything, just freeware.

LM

[snyder]

Here is another one screen capture utility freeware.  Donations are accepted.  I'm not sure if it is loaded with any spyware.  I haven't tried it yet but will do so later today.

http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html

 

[panic]

Very, very, very good FREE screen capture utility is at http://www.bigbeanbag.net/andysnap/

Handles multi monitors and can remember capture co-ordinates.

Highly recommended

Ewen :-)

[Little Mac]

Very, very, very good FREE screen capture utility 
Highly recommended

Why don't you tell us how you really feel about andysnap, Ewen? 

[panic]

No. You've got to guess.

[snyder]

Very, very, very good FREE screen capture utility is at http://www.bigbeanbag.net/andysnap/

Handles multi monitors and can remember capture co-ordinates.

Highly recommended

Ewen :-)

I have just installed and I like what I have seen at their website.  I'll try it out later tonight.

Thanks.

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