Ok, first a disclaimer - If this isn't new to you, don't be the dero that feels like they have so say, "OMG! Like, I can't believe that you didn't know that in 1998 already! Totally, like, OMG!"

I was writing a tutorial for gimp-tutorials.net (because that's the nice, free-loving and community spirited kind of guy I am, and I was looking for a quick way to save screenshots of windows into jpgs without the normal Alt + Prt Scr, paste somewhere, save as, yada yada rigmarole.

And I found a gem!

Create a new Word 2007 docx file, paste all your images in there. Save the file, rename it as *.zip and extract it to a directory. Navigate to the extracted directory '\word\media' and there are all your images, numbered in order as PNG files.

But, that beauty of this is that it just opened up so many options for auto-creating DOCX files! Manipulate the XML files in the zip, rezip with PHP or whatever and deliver as content as an alternative to another format. Will probably never do it, but it's friggin cool anyway!

sounds like more effort than copy & paste into mspaint, ctrl-f save as jpg?

Alt + Prt Scr, paste

lol i didn't even know that :/

I just press prt scr and paste.. what does alt do?

I did a test, it copies what you select with mouse before you do it?

alt gets just the window that has focus

what teq said, alt-print screen is easier

all alt seems to do is remove the task bar

Cheers. Yep, it's for lots of pics. Also, as of GIMP 2.6 you can just do Ctrl-V to paste an image into the open program and it will resize the canvas and so on appropriately, which is really handy. The problem is, if you are doing an actual GIMP tutorial then you need GIMP - and with the new GIMP launcher you can't have two GIMPs open at once, so that's not particularly useful.

alt gets just the window that has focus

f***! That's HANDY

Another thingy I just worked out. You have to rename the file to *.zip if you want to use Winrar right-click to extract it. But if you are using 7-zip it doesn't care about the file names, you can right click any file and try to extract it. Handy for Firefox XPI addon files and Java packages.

Wow you guys asking about alt + print screen are such noobs, even the biggest noob like *HeardY* knows about it, you should be ashamed of yourselves!

hahah I was thinking the EXACT same thing Opec :)

Though I am pretty cainer in office

I'm actually working on something that uses that idea at work to create printable versions of webpages on demand (yes, we have a print stylesheet but we still need to present one particular section as word docs on request).

This is one thing about macs I love. There are multiple keyboard shortcuts to take different types of screencaps, such as full window, or bring up a xhair then just select the area you want.. and saves to neatly numbered .png's on your desktop.

Has helped me out heaps when I'm working and wanting to email back and forth changes pretty quickly.

I use an App called Screenshot Pilot. Free, easy (hotkey) screen capping for all your manual writing needs.

windows and focus.. dont get me started

Haha, I didn't know about the alt thing either, thanks!

There are seriously dozens of alternatives to this method that don't involve: Uncompressed png files unsuitable for the web, being limited to png, using bloated $100 software, WAY too many steps, or following advice from pinky.

last edited by Hashy at 08:18:16 15/Jul/09

(but im not going to tell you what they are)

ALT+PrtScn is the most handy Windows shortcut I've leatrnt in a long time.

Yeah because we should listen to a cock lover like hashy... lol

Here's the tute I was writing: http://gimp-tutorials.net/A-folded-and-cut-papercraft-or-scrapbook-style-headings

Nice tutorial but I don't like the final product.

On the subject of screen captures Vista has in accessories a feature called the "snipping tool" that lets you drag a box around just the area you want to capture and save in a choice of formats.
I regularly use a more powerful version of this technique in the program SnagIt.