How to use the Snipping Tool to capture screenshots in Microsoft Windows 7 and Vista

The Snipping Tool allows you to quickly and easily capture a screenshot of the entire screen, a single window, a user-defined rectangle or a user-defined area of any shape and provides some simple tools for editing the images you capture.

To open the Snipping Tool, press the Start button and type "snip", without quotes, in the Start menu search box, then click "Snipping Tool" in the results list.

This is what you should see when the Snipping Tool opens:

Click on the down arrow beside New to see the four different types of image capture that the program can perform. The blue ball icon shows which option is currently selected.

Free-form snip

The first option is Free-form snip. If you click it the mouse pointer will change to a scissors icon. Now, by clicking and holding down the left mouse button, you can draw any kind of shape you want to select the portion of the screen you would like to capture.
If you change your mind and no longer want to snip something, you can press Esc to cancel the snip.

When you have selected what you want, release the left mouse button. A window like the one in the screenshot below will open showing the captured image in the shape you drew.

Click image to enlarge

That looks a little bit like a bird with a shark's fin on its back, not terribly useful, but it's a good example of the odd shapes you can select using the free-form snip.

There are several things you can do to your screenshot in this window:

• You can save it in a few different file formats
• Copy it
• Send the snip in an email or as an attachment to an email
• Draw on it using some different pen styles
• Highlight sections of the image
• Erase parts of the image

Rectangular Snip

Unsurprisingly, this option allows you select a rectangular portion of the screen of whatever size you require.

Window Snip

This allows you to select any open window to be captured. When you use this, the mouse pointer will change to the hand icon and any window you hover over will be outlined with a red box as in the image below.

Click image to enlarge

This is effectively the same as selecting a window and pressing Alt + Print Screen on your keyboard.

Full-screen Snip

This allows you capture an image of the entire screen. This  works exactly the same way as pressing the Print Screen key on your keyboard.

Ok, that's it for the Snipping Tool. Remember, you can cancel the capture by pressing Esc, or clicking the Cancel button in the Snipping Tool window.

Related: How to take a screenshot in Windows 7, Vista and XP using Print Screen