Windows 7: Snipping Tool

3 November, 2009 - 07:00 AM - 13 Comments

Windows 7 has a pretty nifty application default in the OS called the “Snipping Tool” this tool allows you to cut a portion of your desktop and turn it into an image, it is similar to print screen for only a predefined section of your desktop. You can use this tool to cut articles out of blogs, images off of web pages, or even snippets of your own applications and use them.

Check out my video demonstration on using the Windows 7 Snipping Tool:

Though the tool allows you to snip out rectangle, circle, freeform shapes from your screen, the Windows 7 Snipping Tool only allows you to draw freehand lines, I can’t draw steady with a mouse and have horrible handwriting especially when trying to draw letters on screen. Therefore I wish the snipping tool had these extra features:

Shape drawing (circles, squares, ellipticals…etc)
Straight lines (so you don’t have to free draw straight lines)
Basic text functionality (So you can at least type words)

Like I said, you can save the image and load it into a paint program, but it would save time if the snipping tool were just enhanced to do these additional things and it would save time.

Let me know what you think of my demonstration.

-Dragon Blogger

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Written by Justin Germino (1518 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

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Tech Avenue

I use this snipping tool all the time! It's great for quickly screen grabbing different windows on the desktop for making my tutoirals.

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Usman@free microsoft downloads

If you have OneNote, I prefer the snipping tool of OneNote .. otherwise I'm very comfortable with Snagit..

Justin Germino

OneNote does have a good clipping tool and retains the source, this is a good option for those who don't have Windows 7 and have Office 2010.

David

This is not true. Windows 7 snipping tool allows free-form, rectangular, window, and full-screen snips. These can be found under "New" when the snipping tool is opened.

dragonblogger

You are absolutely right, I need to go back and update this post.

I wasn't talking about snipping shapes, but doing some drawing on the clip after you cut it.

Active Directory Tools

Cool tool, I've had a hard time finding a simple snippet it tool. Will give this one a try!
.-= Active Directory Tools´s last blog ..FSMO Roles =-.

Martin

I'm so glad that Microsoft didn't put a print function in the snipping tool. It's so much easier to open a second program to print.

Alan @ Glass Pipes

That's good news...I've been looking to go 64bit but am afraid of bugs. Currently running Linux Mint but I might get Win 7 64 after the Service packs come out.

Windows 7 help

Snipping Tool is a useful Windows 7 Feature. I often use it to draw. Thank you for your tutorial video.
I thinks more and more Windows 7 tools will help us easily.

Very cool tutorial, great job :)
I'm pretty comfortable just using the print screen and then crop it in another app so this app isn't a huge help but I can see it being useful for certain things. BTW whats your opinion of Win 7 compared to Vista/XP?

Windows 7 64 Bit is much faster than Vista 32 bit, I can tell you that since I upgraded.

Heather Kephart

I use the print screen application all the time to drag shots into Paint Shop Pro and put a goat on somebody's head or something like that. Good to know that Windows 7 has such a wonderful tool to make this even easier!
.-= Heather Kephart´s last blog ..Post-Halloween NaNoWriMo Crankfest =-.