Using the Capture Tool

ScreenSteps 2.8.7 introduced a brand new capture tool that helps streamline capturing new images and replacing existing images. The same features are provided on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Capture Feedback

The Capture Feedback window provides information about the current capture session and spells out the shortcut keys you can use to access certain features.

  1. The space bar toggles between window capture and area capture mode. In this screenshot window capture mode is active.
  2. Pressing the R key cycles through your capture history. As you press R, previous rectangles that you have capture will appear. Hold down the Shift key while pressing R to cycle backwards.
  3. Press the C key to toggle the visibility of the mouse cursor. By default the mouse cursor will be hidden but ScreenSteps will remember the last setting you used each time a new screen capture session begins.

Capturing Windows

In window capture mode the window under the capture cursor will highlight (1). Clicking or pressing the enter/return key will capture that window.

You know you are in window capture mode when the window icon is visible (2).

Tip: You can switch to area capture mode by clicking and dragging the mouse. ScreenSteps will automatically exit window capture mode and begin drawing a capture rectangle.

Area Capture Mode

In area capture mode you manually define the are of the screen that you want to capture (1). Simply click and drag to draw a capture rectangle. You can then use the handles around the rectangle to resize as needed (2).

You can nudge the rectangle around the screen a pixel at a time using the arrow keys. Hold down the SHIFT key to nudge the rectangle 10 pixels at a time.

To capture the area, press the enter/return key or click on the camera icon (3).

Showing and Hiding the Cursor

You can specify whether or not you want the cursor to appear in your screenshot by pressing the C key. In this screenshot you can see that the cursor is visible.

Here is the same screenshot with the cursor hidden.

6 Comments

Tim

Is it possible to capture a scrolling image, please?

I need to show a form which is deeper than a single screen. It is necessary to scroll to complete all the fields.

It does not make logical sense, in terms of the series of forms to split each form into more than one step.

Is there some way of doing this, please?

Greg DeVore

To do this you would need to use a third party utility to capture the full web page and then import that image into ScreenSteps. Google makes an extension for Chrome that will do this (Google Screen Capture) and there are several other free ones for Chrome and Safari that I have used.

Greg DeVore

@Tim - that being said, I still usually break up long forms into multiple screen captures. I think one long screen capture is too much to process mentally. For me, it is much easier to see a series of steps that break up the form into its logical sections with the corresponding explanations.

Tim

Thanks Greg, I'll use your Snagit clipboard system then.

I'm not using the system for lessons. I'm using it to specify custom Google Analytics tracking code, so it suits me to treat the pages as one item.

Jorge

Hi, I'm having a problem with Image Capture.
After pressing the 'Capture Image' button, my whole screen goes black and I can only get a black images out of the selection. Has anyone seen this before?

Trevor DeVore

@Jorge - take a look at this article in the Clarify manual. It discusses this issue. It is probably related to the security software you have installed.

http://help.clarify-it.com/m/clarify/l/243186-why-is-the-screen-black-when-i-try-to-capture-the-screen-on-windows

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