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Taking screenshots

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In this guide, you will be learning how you can take screenshots and then how you can upload them to the forums using the forums themselves or an image sharing site.

 

Guide originally written by Crenel, updated by JJ and Lee3319

 

Why are screenshots important?
Screenshots can be useful when it comes to trading or having an bug.  If you were to trade with someone and then later on got scammed, you could have screenshots showing the trade agreement and the trade.  As for having a bug, rather than explaining what you see, usually it is more helpful showing the person the problem.

So lets start...
For us to take a screenshot, we first need to know the right buttons to press

Macintosh:
If you want to take a screenshot of the whole of your screen then press Command, Shift, and 3 all at once. To take a screenshot of a selected area, just use Command, Shift and 4.  You can them drag the mouse to select the area where you want.  When you hear the sound of a camera snapping a picture, you know you've done it right.  You should find that the screenshots save straight to your desktop.  On a Mac, images are saved as a PNG file. You can change this by opening them in Photoshop or any other photo editing/manipulating program, and saving it in either .jpg, .gif or .bmp format. Suggested formats are .jpg or .png. (On a side note, if you press down the control key at the same time you press the other three, it will copy the image to the clipboard instead, making it possible for you to simply paste the image into your photo editing program. You can skip a step this way.)

Windows (pre-Vista):
Press the Print Screen button at the top of your keyboard. It is located directly after the F12 key and directly above the Insert key (Insert is found above the arrow keys). This will take a picture of your entire screen, which you may then paste into MSPaint, Photoshop, or any other photo editing/manipulating program of your choice. Once you do that, save the image in either .jpg, .gif, .bmp, or .jpg format. Just like with Macintosh computers, suggested formats are .jpg or .png.  The keys are highlighted in the image below.

Here's a useful trick: if you make sure PWO is the active window, you can hold Alt while you press Print Screen button, then you will take a picture of just PWO, instead of the entire screen. Alt + Print Screen takes a screenshot of only the ACTIVE window - in other words, the program you are using right now. It doesn't work for every program, but it works for most, including PWO. (These both work on Vista too, but the below steps are recommended instead)
 

Windows Vista/7:
Vista and 7 users can make use of the Snipping Tool.  To find the Snipping tool in Vista it is usually located on the start bar whereas you need to search for it in Windows 7.  The tool allows you to save the images in .jpg or .png format.  You can take a free-form snip, recentangle snip, window snip and a full-screen snip.

 

 

Hosting
Now that you have your image ready to upload, we need a way to host it on the internet. There are many websites that feature free use of this type of function, but the most popular ones are Photobucket and Imageshack. Below we will cover how you can hosts screenshots from these two sites.  If the image is being hosted on the wiki, you don’t have to host the images on any of these sites.  You can just use the wiki's direct link.

 

Please note: The following steps are based on you having an account with both sites

 

1) Uploading the image

 

Photobucket:

Click on 'Upload images & videos' and find the file that you want to upload then click open. To upload more than one file just select the files while holding down the CTRL key.

 

 

 

Imagebank:
Once you login to Imageshack click on 'Upload image' on the right hand side and then 'Browse' once the box comes up. You don't have to checked any of the boxes. You can only select one image of which you then click on 'Open'. Then click on 'Upload'.

2) Getting the url links

Right as of now the image should have been uploaded.

 

Photobucket:

Once the image has finished uploading, you will redirected to another page. Click on Save & Get Links and then you copy the direct link.

Imageshack:

Once uploaded click on the little 'i' next to the image and then copy the direct link.

 

You can also upload your images to Imageshack without an account - here's how:

 

a) Uploading the image

Looking at Imageshack, you should notice two things: There is a "Browse" button, and there is a "Host it" button. First, you need to press the "Browse" button to find the image file you would like to upload. In this case, I want to upload a picture of Sydney, Australia (which comes stock in my computer). So I click the Browse button and find my picture.

After you have your picture, press "Open", and then press the "Host it" button I mentioned earlier. At this point, Imageshack may give you a pop-up or open up a new tab with an advertisement in it. Just close this, or if you are feeling charitable, visit the website. Either way, it will take you to a screen that looks like this

 

b) Getting the url links

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find a link called "Direct link to image". This is the URL that you want to copy. Once you do that, move on to the final step

 

3) Adding images to posts/signatures

For the forums:
Once you have got the links you are now ready to add your images. There are two ways of adding images either using BBCode the 'insert image' button.

 

For the 'insert image' button

Click on the button and then insert the direct link into the box and click on 'insert image'.

 

BBCode:
Insert your direct link between the two brackets.

 

Tip: Whatever you decide to do to get your image into your post, you'll want to hit the Preview button at the bottom of the page to make sure your images look correct in your post. As a general rule of thumb, if you are going to post a large image, it's best to choose the link at the top of the Imageshack page called "Thumbnail for forums". If there are multiple options, always look for the one with the lower case "img" tags, as they tend to be more universally applicable than the upper case ones are. If your image will stretch the screen, please resize it using this method

 

For the wiki:

For the wiki there are two ways of posting images. Either by using the image importer or inserting some html.

1) By clicking on the insert image in editing mode you can choose an image to upload from your computer.
2) If you’re planning on using an image from a site such as Photobucket, then you need to find the direct link

The end...

I hope that all of you out there will find some use out of this guide, as it will allow for more precise problem-solving on the part of the GM's, as it will allow them to see exactly what you do. At the same time, it will allow for better trading as players will be able to visually see what they are trading for stat-wise before the trade, and it will allow for uses outside of the PWO community as well.

Have fun, and happy posting!

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