How to Add Screen Captures to eHow Articles with Paint Shop Pro

Adding pictures to your eHow articles makes them much easier to understand and more fun to read. Finding appropriate pictures to use for how-to articles can be a challenge though. If you're writing eHow tutorials or how-tos, Paint Shop Pro's screen capture utility makes it easy to illustrate your eHow tutorials with screen captures. Here's how to set up and use Paint Shop Pro screen capture to illustrate your eHow tutorials.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paint Shop Pro
• Web browser

1. 
    
   This is where you find the screen capture setup and start dialogs.

   In Paint Shop Pro, click on File->Import->Screen Capture->Setup to open the screen capture setup dialog.

2. 
    
   Set up your screen capture settings in Paint Shop Pro.

   Set up your Paint Shop Pro screen capture utility to capture an area of your screen and to activate on right mouse click. Under Capture, tick the circle next to Area. Under Activate Capture Using, tick the circle next to Right Mouse Click. Under options, tick Multiple Captures.

3. 
    
   Switch to your work window and back to Paint Shop Pro using Alt-Tab.

   Use Alt-Tab to switch to the screen you want to capture, and then Alt-Tab back to Paint Shop Pro. In this case, I'm capturing from the eHow editor window because I'm writing a tutorial on using Paint Shop Pro screen capture for eHow tutorials. When you click on Screen Capture -> Start in the next step, Paint Shop Pro will minimize itself and switch the window focus to the next window. Switching to your work window and then back to Paint Shop Pro sets it up so that starting the screen capture will automatically bring the right window into focus for the capture.

4. 
    
   Activate your screen capture from the File menu.

   In Paint Shop Pro, go to File->Import->Screen Capture->Start to activate the screen capture utility. The Paint Shop Pro window will minimize and focus will shift to your work window so that you can define your capture area.

5. 
    
   Select the area that you want to capture then left-click to copy it to Paint Shop Pro.

   In your work window, right-click once to activate the screen capture. Your cursor will change to a cross-hair cursor. Move the cursor to the corner of the area that you want to capture. Left-click the mouse and release, then drag the mouse to outline the area that you want to capture. As you drag the mouse, the area that you're selecting will be outlined in a black border and the dimensions of your selection will appear in the center of your selection. When the box outlines the selection you want to copy, left click again. You'll hear a "donk" sound that tells you the selection has been captured.

6. 
    
   You can add text and graphics to your screen capture in Paint Shop Pro.

   Switch to Paint Shop Pro and check your captured image. It may take a bit of practice to get the selections that you want because the right-click, left-click, release, drag, left-click sequence that you use is not intuitive. You can also crop and edit the image in Paint Shop Pro to add text, arrows and instructions to your screen capture.

7. 
    
   Save your file using keywords in your file name.

   Save your file as a .gif or .jpg image in Paint Shop Pro. Boost your keyword density at the same time by using keywords in your file name. Separate words in the file name with dashes because Google interprets dashes as spaces. In this case, I've named all the image files for this article with "ehow-paint-shop-pro-screen-capture-#.jpg".

8. 
    
   Click on Add Image in the eHow editor.

   In the eHow editor, click on Add an Image below the step where you want to add your Paint Shop Pro screen capture. This will open a dialog box that lets you select the image that you want to use.

9. 
    
   Select the picture you want to add to your eHow article from the file selection box.

   Click on the Browse Button to open a file selection box so that you can choose the image that you want to use. If you keep all your eHow picture files in one folder organized by article, it will be easy to find the pictures that you want to add to your eHow article.

10. 
     
    Add a keyword-rich caption to your Paint Shop Pro screen capture.

    Add a caption to your screen capture. Remember that captions count in calculating your keyword density. They're a great place to add a keyword or two.

Tips & Warnings

• You can use the Paint Shop Pro screen capture utility for capturing images in other software programs for software eHow how-tos.
• If you're doing a tutorial on how to use a feature on another popular web site, Paint Shop Pro screen captures can make your steps easier to understand.
• This tutorial uses Paint Shop Pro 9, which is more robust than the stripped down Paint Shop Pro X2 Photo Editing Software latest version.

Resources

• Get Paint Shop Pro 9 at Amazon

[companylogos]

on 10/10/2009 Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium[1] to a surface (support base). In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete.

Really Paint Shop Pro Good, Post http://www.companylogos.ws/

[dorigillman]

on 6/24/2009 great instruction. i will save this one to my favorites to get to later!

[omghow]

on 6/24/2009 I did this. thanks for sharing.

[karileighk]

on 6/23/2009 I did this! 5*

[joni04]

on 5/25/2009 Adding this to my favs! Thanks for the great instruction.