Sean Feeney
Architect of the digital age

The Snipping Tool

24 March 2007

Vista ships with a nice little utility which Mac users have had for a long time -- an application responsible for doing screen captures. It's called the Snipping Tool, and you can access it by typing in "snippingtool" at the Run prompt. On Windows, you can do two different types of screen captures, both relying on the Print Screen button. If you hit just Print Screen, then you'll get the entire monitor captured. If you hold down Alt when hitting Print Screen, then the currently focused window is captured. In either case, the captured image is placed in the clipboard. This is a really handy utility, but has many drawbacks. The Snipping Tool is a nice GUI way for you to capture the screen. What's more, it has some extra functionality, such as the ability to do free-hand screen captures, and capturing arbitrary rectangles of the screen. Neither of these things is available via the traditional Print Screen key.

Posted in screen capture, Windows Vista