Master screenshot post

[psychoadept]

There have been several good how-tos on posting screenshots. This post compiles all of them so that we can have one sticky topic on screenshots. Links to the original posts are provided, but the posts have been locked. If we need to update these methods, leave a comment here or contact a moderator.

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This one is easy and no "enrolling":

1.  Take a screenshot of what you want others to see;  you can use the built-in Windows "Snipping Tool", Irfanview's Options/Capture Screenshot, or a zillion other apps.

2.  Go to https://imgur.com/upload

3.  Browse to or drag image, upload

4.  When image appears on the site, you can either:

  a)  Right-click it and choose "Copy link location" (dialog from Firefox context menu, your browser may differ);  this will give a link to the image file itself (ends in for example *.jpg).  You can then use the MusicBee forum's "Insert Image" dialog button and insert the link, which will embed the image itself in the post.

  b)  Or, click on the Imgur "Copy" button they provide there, which will produce a no-extension link you can insert into a post using the "Insert Hyperlink" button.  This provides a LINK to the image in your post instead of embedding it as in a), which is preferable if you want to use a huge image that otherwise would take up too much real estate in the forum, which can be annoying.

Be sure you check your post first using "Preview" to be sure it's what you want before hitting "Post" (note the difference between using "Insert Image" and "Insert HyperLink").

Other sites/methods abound, but as I said, this is the one that works easiest for me.

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ShareX is a free and open-source screenshotting and screencasting program, which has a possibly rather overwhelming set of features and settings.

But without going through all the options, it can be a very easy to use tool for just making a simple screenshot and creating a shortcut link that can be used for adding a screenshot to your forum post.

This is a quick and short tutorial to accomplish just that.

Start ShareX, select 'Capture', and then from the underlying menu select your required method of capturing.
For this example you could use 'Region'.
That will allow you to select the area of the screen you want to capture.



When that area has been captured, you will see the filename of that capture appearing in the main panel.
Right-click on that filename, select 'Copy', and then 'Forum (BBCode) linked image'.
That will place a shortcut into your clipboard, which you can directly paste into your forum message.



That's it.

You can also set ShareX up, so that when you right-click on an existing image file, and then select 'Upload with ShareX', you get presented this panel, from where you can also quickly create a working link.

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To add an image to a post:

1. Create the image by taking a screenshot with the PrtScn button and paste the image into an application such as Paint. Save the image. Alternatively, you can use another application such as Windows Snip to create the image.

2. Crop the image to show what you want to display and possibly add markings to highlight certain areas. You can use Paint for this.

3. Upload the image to an image hosting site such as MediaFire or ImageShack. These are both free image hosting sites.

4. Get the direct link to the image and copy it. This link cannot be a page which has the image on it, but must be the actual address of the page. It should end in .jpg, .bmp, or .png if it is the address of the image, such as http://www.example.com/screenshot.jpg.

5. In the post that you want to add the image to, you can simply paste the link and post it.

(Advanced) To make the image actually appear in the post
6. Surround the direct link with these tags to make the actual image appear:

Code

[img][/img]

7. You can make the image link somewhere by adding these tags:

Code

[url=http://www.example.com/link][/url]

So the full link would look like

Code

[url=http://www.example.com/link][img]http://www.example.com/screenshot.jpg[/img][/url]

8. Now, you can center your image by adding these tags:

Code

[center][/center]

9. Finally, you can resize the image so it doesn't take up the whole page by adding 'width=' or 'height=' in the img tag, so it would look like:

Code

[center][url=http://www.example.com/link][img width=200]http://www.example.com/screenshot.jpg[/img][/url][/center]

So, as you can see, it can get complicated. But of course, the final steps are not entirely necessary.

For additional tags, please see this page. I am not sure if they are all implemented here.

[psychoadept]

A further note if you're embedding the image: if the URL you use doesn't end in an image file extension like .jpg or .png, the image will not show up in the final post. Often imgur and other sites provide a link for the image that points to a "holder" page on their own site and you have to dig a little to find the direct link.