Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
December 24, 2006

Volume 2, Number 28 — Sunday, December 24, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Protect Your Computer — Block Spyware and Adware
Get CounterSpy from Sunbelt Software
That's what I use! Read my review

7.  Screen Printing with PrintKey 2000

If you ever wanted to print your Windows screen or any portion of it, you've undoubtedly hit the PrntScrn button.

Of course, in the old DOS days, this actually did something — it printed the screen.

In the Windows world, though, it copies the image of the screen into the Windows Clipboard.

I've found a great, small, free utility program that gives me a lot more flexibility with the PrntScrn key. It's called PrintKey 2000. Do a Google search and you'll find it easily.

The program itself hasn't been changed in a number of years -- its dated 1999 at some of the sites I found. PrintKey 2000 is no longer available from the manufacturers — and is not supported, either. This was the last freeware version of the program.

It has been replaced by PrintKey Pro, which adds features and is now a commercial program priced at $19.95.

NOTE: The PrintKey Pro site indicates that PrintKey 2000 is not Windows XP compatible. I haven't had any problems with it, but you might run into whatever incompatibility issue there is. It might be real, or it might be that the author chose not to test and validate that everything in PrintKey 2000 worked fine in Windows XP.

If I want to capture only a portion of the screen, I can double-click on the PrintKey 2000 icon in the Windows status bar to display the program window. Then, I can click on its Rectangle icon and capture a portion of the screen, like this...

A simple click on its Edit icon opens my default BMP (Windows Bitmap image) editor, which is PhotoImpact photo editing software in my case).

If I'm going to edit the file, for example, to add arrows pointing at particular items, I save the file in PhotoImpact's .UFO format to retain all the detailed information about the objects (the base image and the arrow, for example).

Then, I "merge" the objects into one image and save it as a standard JPG image file. The merge wasn't really necessary at this point, since the JPG file will have the object merged anyway.

The merge is necessary for my next step, which is to resize the picture to a smaller version for normal display in the article.

PrintKey 2000 makes it easier for me to grab a small piece of a Window, a whole Window or the whole Windows Desktop.

I can easily print from within PrintKey 2000. I can even load and save images from PrintKey 2000.

8.  Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

If you like my  Terry's Computer Tips email newsletter or the online edition, you can help me increase the number of subscribers to my free emailed newsletter.

Tell a friend!

Not only do you get notices that the newsletters are available and content that is not in the online newsletter, but subscribing is the only way to get my Special Edition Newsletters which go only to subscribers.

If you get my free Terry's Computer Tips email newsletter, please feel free to forward your copy of the newsletter to a friend or friends that you think would be interested. Be sure to forward the entire newsletter, including my copyright notices and any advertising.

Of course, if you do not get my free email newsletter, I invite you to subscribe, too!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 28 — Sunday, December 24, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.