How to Make Your Print Screen Like GIFs
Performing a print screen or screen capture process is an ideal way to capture a graphic, document or piece of information to use elsewhere, such as an avatar or icon, but when you press the Print Screen key, you end up capturing far more than just your intended area. Use Windows Paint, the graphics software found in all Windows operating systems, to trim the excess and turn your print screen process into a GIF. GIFs are one of the only file formats that support transparency, and Paint's default setup is a transparent background. So when you're cutting and cropping, that step is taken care of for you, making your screen capture even more GIF-like.
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Instructions
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Open an Internet Explorer page, document or image you want to capture and make like a GIF. Press the "Ctrl" and "Print Screen" or "Prt Sc" buttons together on your keyboard to perform the screen capture.
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Open Windows Paint. Click the "Paste" button on the ribbon to paste in the screen capture.
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Click the "View" tab at the top of the workspace. Click the "Zoom out" button until you can see the entire print screen capture. Note that if you work on dual monitors, the screen capture would have caught both monitors, so you may need to zoom out more as the capture will be wide.
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Click the "Home" tab. Click the "Select" button's drop-down menu on the ribbon. Choose "Free-form selection." Draw an outline around just the part of the print screen capture you want to use for the GIF, eliminating any of the background and excess.
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Click the "Crop" button on the ribbon. The soon-to-be GIF is cropped to its required size and contents.
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Click the "Paint" button in the top-left corner of the screen. Choose "Save As." Type a name for the GIF in the "File name" box. Click the "Save as type" menu and choose "GIF." Click the "Save" button.
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