You want this:

There you can add text, wipe out a name, edit the picture, whatever you want! Oh yes. If you're going to use text in your screenie, make sure that you use the transparent background for the text box. It's the 2nd option underneath all of the tools. It makes the text look better on the screenie.

Here's my version of that screenie:

Then push Ctrl S (File Save) to save your work of art. I save all of my images as .png files now and it seems to work very nicely, so when the window pops up for saving instructions, put a name on your picture and on the bottom of the window it will say Save as type: I suggest the PNG.

Editing Tools

To go into more depth about what you can do to your screenies, I'm providing a description of the tools you can use and why you would possibly need to use them! ^_^

Okay, this is the toolbar that Paint has and what my explanations go off of.

I'm going to explain all of the tools used for screenie making and how you use them.

Selection Tool

First of all comes that selection tool I talked about earlier.

You use it to select the part of the screenie that you want to keep. You don't really want the extra stuff around it because first of all the file will be too big to do any good, and second of all it would take up a lot of space on your screenie page and no one wants to see a messy screenie page!

Eraser

I would only prefer to use the eraser when you have to erase text from a white background. For example, erasing names from the neoboard topics.

Pick Color Tool/Paint Brush Tool

This is what I use to erase names and such. It makes the erasing job so much neater! What you do is you click on the tool and you click on whatever color you want to use to erase with (usually the color around it). Then you click on the little paint brush

and paint over the name or whatever. Here's my example for you:

(Click to view full size)

And please, don't use the paint brush for more than that. You probably won't need it. If you accidentally erase something with the regular eraser, don't worry! Just click the pick color tool and then the paint bucket tool (right beside the eraser) and fill it in!

Text Tool

This tool is used soooooo much in making of screenies. I just wish more screenie makers would use this instead of using the paint brush to paint words on. Very messy. Anyway, the text tool is used a lot. Usually if anyone edits a screenie the first thing they add is text. So, all you have to do is click on the tool and click and drag how big of a text box you want. As I said before, make sure that the 2nd option underneath the toolbar is highlighted because it makes the text on the screenie look better.

Here's my example of that:

(Click for actual size)

The next thing you can do is change what color you want your text to be. At the bottom of the Paint window there is a box with a bunch of colors in it. You can pick what color you want from there.

After you pick the color you can choose what font you want it to be so you can click in your text box and a menu will pop up on the screen and you can choose what font you want from there!

When you're done with your text you can just click off of the text box. Be careful, though, because after you click off of it you can't edit your text again unless you erase it. If you wanted to change it your best bet would be to erase what you have there and make a whole new text box.

Line Tool

You can use the line tool a couple of ways. You can underline things with it to make them stand out and you can draw arrows with it. Those are the two things that come to mind when I think of using the line tool. All you have to do to use it is click on the tool and then click and drag it to make a line. Hold the Shift key down to make a straight line. Woo! It wasn't that hard! Here's an example of why you would want to use the line tool for arrows instead of the paint tool:

It's obviously much neater. You can also pick how thick you want the line. When you select the line tool, this little thing will pop up underneath all of the other regular tools. You just pick how thick you want your line.

Rectangle Tool/Oval Tool

I use these tools almost as much as I use the text tool. I've used the rectangle tool in the tutorial many times, including putting a box around what tool I'm talking about. As you can see, it's very useful. You use these much like the font and line tools. You can pick what color you want and how thick the box is. You just click and drag how big you want the box or oval to be and around what. You can't move it once you put it there, so if you mess up, just pull the Ctrl Z trick (edit undo). When you click on the tool 3 options will appear underneath all of the regular buttons.

I always use the top option because that doesn't cover up anything. Here are examples of each:

The oval tool is the same exact way.

Uploading

Now that you have your image saved you can upload it to the internet! To do that, get an account with a free image hosting site. That means that you can take the files on your computer (mostly images) and upload them onto that site. Then you can copy the URL for them and use them on the internet! I use Photobucket. They haven't given me any problems (except with bandwidth. If you exceed your bandwidth that means that too many people have looked at your images and they're going to shut down your images for the rest of the month). So you get a free account on Photobucket (or wherever).

Then make a new subalbum and then you can upload pictures.

When you're ready to do that, click the browse button beside the little text box.

Then make a new subalbum and then you can upload pictures.

Then you click on the image that you want.

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Putting Your Image on a Site

Now that you have your image on Photobucket, you can copy the second code (the one with the less than and greater signs around it) onto a web page. To do that, you simply copy that code and paste it wherever you want it to go!

For instance if you want to put it on a pet page you go to Pet Central on the left

and then click on Pet's Page (the icon with the Lupe)

and then edit!

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Do you have any questions? If so, then read my FAQ by clicking here. If your question wasn't answered, then neomail me at braikuvdawn.