Posting Screen Shots
If you want to post tweets from Twitter or stories from news and other sites, one way is to copy the text and post it as a quote. A slightly more effective way is to post a screen shot of the site (and a link to the page).
To create, upload and post a screen shot, do the following:
1. Navigate to the site in question and make sure that everything that you want to see in the image is visible on screen. You may need to switch your web browser to 'Full Screen Mode' to do this (press F11 for full screen and F11 again to revert back).
2. Once you have the page aligned correctly, press the
Print Screen button on you keyboard (it may also be labelled '
prt sc' or similar). On a Windows machine this will take a shot of the screen and hold it in the memory.
Please Note: You can only capture one screen shot at a time. If you take another, it will overwrite the previous one.
3. To view, crop, resize and save the image, the easiest method is with MS Paint. First open Paint and paste the image in. You can do this by either clicking on the
Paste button, or pressing CTRL+v on your keyboard:
- Paste.jpg (75.18 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
(I am using MS Paint supplied with Windows 7. Older versions will have the same functions, but in slightly different places).
4. Now you can crop only the part of the screen shot that you want to keep. From the
Select menu at the top, make sure that Rectangular Selection is selected and then use it to draw a box around the part of the image you want to keep:
- Crop select.jpg (60.22 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
Click at one corner of the desired area and then drag and release at the opposite corner. You can also resize the crop area once the dotted line appears:
- Crop window.jpg (98.23 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
5. Once you have the correct bit of the image selected, press the
Crop button. This will automatically cut the crop area, open a new Paint canvas and paste it in:
- Cropped.jpg (47.9 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
You can now make any annotations to the image you like (as in the red box drawn in Paste.jpg, above).
6. To make sure that the page doesn't distort when you post the image on the thread (and people lose access to the quote button), you can resize the image to make sure it fits. Click the
Resize button (under crop) and a new window will open. Select
Pixels as the method of resizing and change the horizontal number. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that the width is
750 pixels or less. Once you have entered a new number, click OK and it will resize the image for you.
- Resize.png (99.5 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
7. Once you have your image to the correct crop, size and with any annotations you wish to add you should now save it. The recommended formats to save in are JPG or PNG.
Adding Your Image (or Other Files) to a Post
Now you have your image, use the following method to add it to your post. You will need to use the Full Editor. This method is the same if you want to upload documents (such as PDFs or spreadsheets).
1. Under the Post a Reply section, there is 'Upload Attachment'. Click
Browse and navigate to the image on your computer. It will now show the file name where is initially said 'No file selected.':
- Upload 1.jpg (30.24 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
2. Click on
Add the file. Another window will open with a progress bar, as the file is uploaded to the site:
- Upload 2.jpg (65.57 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
Screen shots are, generally, small files and the upload should only take a few seconds. The new window will automatically close when it finishes. A new part of the Full Editor will be added to the page, showing the file that has just been uploaded:
- Upload 3.jpg (52.05 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
If you have uploaded the wrong attachment, click
Delete file to remove it (this will also remove it from you post, if you have already done step 3).
Repeat for as many images as you want to upload.
3. To add the image to your post, first place the cursor where you want the image to be placed.
- Upload 4.jpg (59.02 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
Then from the
Attachments section immediately underneath the text window, select the correct one from the drop down and click
Place inline:
- Upload 5.jpg (56.69 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
Repeat for as many attachments as you have uploaded.
4. It is a good idea to preview your post, to make sure that the image is in the correct place and the correct size:
- Upload 6.jpg (78.32 KiB) Viewed 19258 times
If it is all correct, click Submit and you're done.