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Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows Build

Windows 10 Is Finally Getting An Improved Screenshot Tool (theverge.com) 143

Posted by BeauHD from the new-experiences dept.
Today, Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17661 to insiders, which includes a new screenshot experience for the upcoming major update. The Verge reports: Screen Sketch, previously bundled with the Windows Ink feature of Windows 10, is now being made into a separate app that can take screenshots and provide options to annotate them. Microsoft has experimented with a variety of screen snipping tools over the years, but a new winkey + shift + S keyboard shortcut will now bring up an area select tool to snip a screenshot and share it instantly from the clipboard. The app will also trigger a notification so you can annotate the screenshot and share it. You can also replace the print screen button on a keyboard with this feature, making the button a lot more useful than today's winkey + printscreen combo.
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Windows 10 Is Finally Getting An Improved Screenshot Tool More

Windows 10 Is Finally Getting An Improved Screenshot Tool

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  • Greenshot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foxx1337 ( 1292800 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:05AM (#56552440)

    Windows already has the ability to run Greenshot. So... thanks Microsoft?

    • Yes, but this isn't just a screenshot, it's a whole new "experience"!

      Today weâ(TM)re taking the first step toward converging our snipping experiences. The new modern snipping experience is here...

      https://blogs.windows.com/wind... [windows.com]

      • Re:Greenshot (Score:5, Funny)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:48AM (#56552560)

        Didn't Apple copyright having an experience on a computer yet?

        Personally I am pretty glad if I don't have an experience with my computer and instead get it to work properly.

        • It looks like the Microsoftee who typed that blog (the one I copied/pasted the quote from) is using an Apple product to type his apostrophes.

        • I had an experience on my computer just a while ago.

          No Apple involved though.

        • No Microsoft beat Apple to it. Windows XP as Marketed as Windows eXPerience. Having used XP I have yet learned to fly. I guess I was using Windows XP wrong, or without having to take some Drugs. Because I never really got any sort of eXPerience with Windows XP. It was painful at first, then it once it got fixed it got boring. But I am still happy they got rid rid of the Phisher Price theme.

        • Didn't Apple copyright having an experience on a computer yet?

          They did, but only in context of reducing the quality of that experience, like removing the escape key, making keys that stick, removal of useful ports, etc.

    • If Greenshot also has dumb "sharing" features built in, then at least they have the excuse that they arent the damn operating system.

    • Yes, Greenshot FTW!!!! (set to copy to clipboard and also open in editor). When sharing my screen it amazes people how fast I can capture and markup an image.

      My company gave me a paid license of SnagIt, but it's a trash heap of complexity. It Snags my brain.

  • Innovation leader (Score:5, Funny)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:15AM (#56552474)
    All these AI stories are completely ridiculed by Microsoft innovative software: we had previously a new version of Paint, and now the ability to take screenshots. Wow! Microsoft, please, don't be too hard on competition.

  • Is this a rebrand of Snipping Tool? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Is this a rebrand of Snipping Tool, or is this a whole new thing? Snipping tool was very nice.

    • But you can draw on it like a pen!
      I mean not useful features such as censoring out information you don't want to share. Like Recognizing text box elements, and being able to flood fill them.
      Or being able to fade most other elements out so the information you want to show is more prevalent.

      Lets be real here. For fun stuff people are using their phones and tablets. People who are using Windows and Linux (not the Android version) are mostly using it for work stuff. There should be more features targeted to

      • the Desktop PC is dead

        You know people have been saying that since the late 90s, right?

      • We need Workstation features, the Desktop PC is dead, The Workstation PC is the future of the technology

        AMEN! I miss working on my old VAX workstation, using the terminal to control some chunk of a server down the hall, the way my use was limited based upon what other people were doing, and my files were never local - only remote - so easier to lose or get "misplaced" when a tape drive was unmounted... Let's bring back those golden days of thin clients and workstations and central/big brother controlling all!

  • Not sure if the artcle author is quite up to date, as I have been using winkey-shift-s since I was upgraded to Windows 10 quite some time ago.
    The Windows-s (no shift) worked in Windows 7 with OneNote installed, and I assumed it was the OneNote function that had changed shortcut key on Win10.

    • I normally use Alt-PrtScr for most of my screen captures, because I normally just want to get the active window I am working on.

  • Alt+PrtScn is all I ever use.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Who wants to snip with a window with a mouse, when the built-in function Windows has always had works just fine? Granted, smaller clips require Paint, but Alt + PrtScn => Window Key + R => mspaint => Enter => Ctrl+V is second nature to me.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Desler ( 1608317 )

      But this is an experience!

    • You're obviously not with the trend.

      You forgot the intermediate steps of

      vectorisation -> 3d printing -> 3d scanning -> logging the result on a blockchain -> AI interpretation of model -> rasterisation -> colour correction -> writing to cloud -> retrieving from cloud -> sharing of images on (n+1) social media accounts -> copy to clipboard

      Each of which would be in a managed container.

      (The sending of files to Microsoft, NSA, Google, GCHQ.... is implicit here and not called out as

    • Granted it is second nature to me too. It isn't obvious. especially as Alt-PrtScn doesn't give you any user feedback that something happened. On iOS when you do a screen capture, the screen will blink white like there was a picture taken and the newer version would show the image in a thumbnail going to your photos.

      But the general rule of thumb is if the directions have more than 3 "then"s in it then it isn't an easy process. Your process had 5 steps.

    • I do.

      windows-shift-s - drag the area you want - ctrl-V

      Granted, if you need the entire current window, fine.
      In my case, I pretty much never want the entire window, so I have used the snipping tool since I discovered it.

    • I do (Alt +) PrntScrn, but use Irfanview, I always keep it's icon handy in the bottom left of the screen. Works great for 95% of everything I'd need it for, and cropping is stupid easy. I almost never use the Snipping tool. If I want a screenshot inside of a fullscreen game, F12 usually works for the ones I play.
      This really sounds like much ado about nothing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dysmal ( 3361085 )

      Until they kill off mspaint...

  • Snipping Tool (Score:5, Informative)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:53AM (#56552574) Homepage

    Seriously?

    Have you people never heard of Snipping Tool?

    Bundled with Windows since at least 7.

    Takes screenshots, partial screenshots, saves as PNG, allows you to draw over them, emails, puts in clipboard.

    It's probably one of the best features of the default Windows installs, as sad as that is.

    • Mod up. Came here to say exactly this.

    • Seriously?

      Have you people never heard of Snipping Tool?

      I think this article is written by the type of people who just discovered that when you hit the power button on a computer the power LED lights up. Every single release of Windows has changed screenshotting. It's about as consistent as a change in the build number.

      Snipping Tool? That's soo old school. Windows ink spaces auto-magically launching with you double tap the pen button, that's a screenshotting tool, and it's been part of Windows 10 since (2 years ago, because who the fuck can keep track of windows

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Seriously?

      Have you people never heard of Snipping Tool?

      Bundled with Windows since at least 7.

      Takes screenshots, partial screenshots, saves as PNG, allows you to draw over them, emails, puts in clipboard.

      It's probably one of the best features of the default Windows installs, as sad as that is.

      The snipping tool makes my job so much easier. I actually use that more in my daily work than I do Word and Excel combined. My main workspace is an internal web application (coded so horribly that the website doesn't scale-for it to be readable without getting a headache you have to use a separate monitor with the resolution turned down to zoom in the content without distorting it) with no real, convenient way to export the content, so screenshots are a sanity saver.

    • The snipping tool is nice but it has it's drawbacks compared to say Snagit. One of those drawbacks is the inability to freeze the screen to take a screen capture. The alternative is to use the time delay function but that's hit and miss. With Snagit, one press of the print screen button freezes the screen and then you can crop the capture immediately before it is captured. No window pops up until after the capture is done. Another problem is that the Snipping tool doesn't keep a catalog of screen captures.

    • Exactly. I use it constantly every day for testing applications and user troubleshooting. Had a colleague point it out to me as I was oblivious that it even existed. I still have to print screen and paint certain things like menus that close when you try to select the tool, so that would be a nice option but other than that it is pretty complete, though being able to insert text would also be good (you can hand write using pen, but messy).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      I am old school. I still use print (sometimes with alt key), crop, and save in another program. :/

  • Meh (Score:2)

    by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

    Paint Shop Pro 5 FTW.

  • Greenshot [getgreenshot.org]. Is there any reason for Microsoft to even begin competing?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by PsyMan ( 2702529 )
      For the same reason that Microsoft Paint completely destroyed Photoshop back in the day. OneUpManShip.

  • Screenshot "Experience" (Score:3)

    by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @04:31AM (#56552652)

    Wow. The screenshot tool is now an experience.
    So cool.... or not.

    You know, that when Don Normal and his group at Apple back in the '80s coined then term User Experience [nngroup.com], they defined it as:

    Encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

    It goes beyond the user interface of a piece of software to include also how the product is packaged, sold, bought, installs; how the user manual is written (remember user manuals? ;-P ), how to get support and support is done, and then how dispose of install media and how to uninstall the software.

    Please stop this nonsensical misuse of the term!

    My next rant is going to be about: "Solution". Until then: Cheers!

    • Please stop this nonsensical misuse of the term!

      English is a continuously evolving language. Mind you the same evolution which brought us the White Royal Horse also brought us the Naked Molerat so make of that what you will.

  • OneNote (desktop not the "tablet" abomination) had (has) a perfectly good snipping tool. However from Win7->8 they changed the combination from WinKey-S to Win-Shift-S (and used the former for search). It was bad for a while but got used to it.

    Now with some W10 update (aniversary, FC? doesn't matter) they took the Win-Shift-S for their stupid screenshot tool (which when triggered looks exactly the same as OneNote's except that nothing happens afterwards which makes you think something is messed up with O

  • Alt-PrtScrn for the window, Shift-PrtScrn for the whole screen. Paste it into Paint (or whatever) and do whatever to it.

    Always hated sitting down to someone else's Windows computer and having heaven knows what third party tool pop up when using those key combos. At least they are using a new key combo ...

  • Assign a Shortcut to Snipping Tool (Score:4, Informative)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:22AM (#56552786)

    Years ago I started assigning a keyboard shortcut to Snipping Tool, which allows you to do pretty much everything they are describing. Copies to clipboard, or you can save in a couple of formats. And... annotate! (at least with highlighting and lines, would be good if they added text).

    Rt-click Snipping Tool icon, in start menu, Open File Location, get Properties in shortcut, define a shortcut key combo.

    One other nice thing with Snipping Tool is you can define a capture delay. So if you want to screen-cap a menu option that would otherwise lose focus and disappear by hitting a key sequence, you can set Snipping Tool to fire at a set time delay so you can mouse through and get it looking like you want before the screen capture hits.

    You can select the area of the screen to capture, no more capturing everything, pasting into Paint, and cropping.

    This "Innovation" has been around since at least Windows 7.

    • The time delay function is garbage to be honest. A better implementation would be to freeze the whole screen upon hitting the shortcut and then allow cropping. Instead, if I want to capture a dropdown menu with snipping tool, I have to set time delay, go hover over the dropdown and hope I get there in time and don't accidentally move off of it before the timer counts down.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You can sort of do this using the print screen button. Get your screen like you want it and hit the button to capture the entire desktop to the clipboard. Then open paint, paste the static image in there, and use the snip tool to clip out the portion you want.

    • Years ago I started assigning a keyboard shortcut to Snipping Tool, which allows you to do pretty much everything they are describing. Copies to clipboard, or you can save in a couple of formats. And... annotate! (at least with highlighting and lines, would be good if they added text).

      Rt-click Snipping Tool icon, in start menu, Open File Location, get Properties in shortcut, define a shortcut key combo.

      One other nice thing with Snipping Tool is you can define a capture delay. So if you want to screen-cap a menu option that would otherwise lose focus and disappear by hitting a key sequence, you can set Snipping Tool to fire at a set time delay so you can mouse through and get it looking like you want before the screen capture hits.

      You can select the area of the screen to capture, no more capturing everything, pasting into Paint, and cropping.

      This "Innovation" has been around since at least Windows 7.

      The problem with the Snipping Tool is that you can't set a global hotkey to take you into instant capture. Capturing always requires you to click through the UI. Contrast that with Greenshot, or some commercial offerings, where you simply invoke the hotkey an instantly start capturing, then are immediately taken to the annotation interface.

      Also, nobody was calling this an "innovation." I' say it's more of a quality of life enhancement.

    • This "Innovation" has been around since at least Windows 7.

      As fun as it is to pick on the word innovation in this sense, I double tap the Surface pen button and I end up with a screenshot dumped right into a drawing panel where I can instantly freehand annotate, crop, and finally save or dump the result to clipboard, and if you insist on using a keyboard shortcut then winkey+printscreen will achieve the same thing.

      The Snipping tool may have been nice, but its replacement is nicer and equally userfriendly.

      Interestingly on Windows 10 the snipping tool doesn't automat

  • Ughhh screenshots.... (Score:3)

    by codeButcher ( 223668 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:48AM (#56552832)

    Screenshots do have their place, but when trying to figure out bugs, there are a couple of things that makes them problematic:
    * Can't copy text from them to paste into your search box, SQL editor, etc.
    * Users only snipping what they think is important, not other on-screen info ("this field does not work!!!!one")
    * Some people reduce the size of the image (for e-mailing), making the text unreadable.
    * And it doesn't show steps the user took to get to the error point.

    Hopefully someday someone will come up with a better app to help users and testers with bug reports... (and user training material).

    For interest's sake: are there any other uses for screenshots?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I use screenshots to document some software installs that request a bunch of information that is important to have, sometimes years away, but is easily lost.

      I'd love something that would record the display as a series of stills, like 15 frames per minute or something where I could just pick the individual frames to keep after.
        It's the stopping, snipping, pasting thing that makes it tedious.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • * Users only snipping what they think is important, not other on-screen info ("this field does not work!!!!one")

      My pet peeve right there ... browser screenshots without the address (URL) field, or even with no browser chrome at all so you can't see what browser it even is.

    • Windows has a recording tool for just that. Been around for years.

    • You mean like "Steps Recorder"? I forget what it was called in previous versions but in Windows 10, under Accessories, there is a tool called Steps Recorder and it does exactly what its name says it does. It used to be limited to 99 steps, I am unsure what its limitation is now.

  • Wow screenshot ability! If only they could work out how to add the "delete" context menu item to the candy crush ad in the start menu, then we'd really have a useable version of windows 10!

  • I've always found it ironic that an operating system that began its long dubiously glorious reign on the back of the self-documenting capability of GUIs has evolved to have more inscrutable fucking hotkeys than I can possibly remember. Give me a GUI button for it or give me death.

    • I generally prefer the use (or at least availability of) keyboard shortcuts, but there's just too much going on in a relatively modern, graphical environment. Having multiple ways of accessing the same functionality may seem redundant to some, at a glance, but is incredibly useful at times. Alt+PrtScr is handy (captures just the current window), as is Alt+WinKey+PrtScr (same, but saves it to a file automatically on Windows 8+)

  • I don't even mess with the built-in "snipping" toy WIndows has, I just use Snagit.

    I've written plenty of documentation and "THIS is how you do it!" emails with it, it's an IT nerd's best friend.

  • It just gives me a blue rectangle. Is that right?

  • hopefully it is just as awesome as when they âoeupgradedâ calc from the fast one to the new metro that takes a year to initially render.

  • Ok how about a usuable text editor? This company has billions of dollars but can't even create a simple usable text editor.
    Or a usable text search. Holy shit why can't I search for simple text in any file? Are these people just impeciles?

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