PowerPoint 2010: Insert Screenshot

Part of our work in PowerPoint 2010 makes the process of adding and editing images easier. Many of your pictures come from your camera or the internet. Another common source is your computer screen. Taking a screenshot and pasting it into the application can be tedious, because in most cases you really only want to show a portion of the screen.

For Office 2010, we decided do something about it.

Introducing the Insert Screenshot tool. With just a couple clicks, you can insert a picture of any window, or you can take a screen clipping by dragging a marquee around the desired area. PowerPoint will then automatically place the image onto your slide:

Since the screenshot is really just a picture once it’s in PowerPoint, you can add shapes and annotations on top of it. You can even apply photo styles, corrections, and artistic effects. In this case a drop shadow is applied so that the picture appears to be floating above the slide:

You can also use the “Screen Clipping” button at the bottom of the Insert Screenshot drop-down to select any portion of the visible screen and convert that to a picture.  For example, here is a screenshot of my Windows 7 taskbar:

The goal of this feature is to save you some time. It’s also available in other apps like Word and Excel. For those of you who didn’t previously know how to take a screenshot, now you have a simple solution. Enjoy!

-Christopher Maloney