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The Snipping Tool is a screenshot utility included in Windows Vista and later versions that can take screenshots in a variety of ways. It can take screenshots of rectangular areas specified by the user, a user-defined free-form area and a typical full-screen shot. The shots are called “snips,” and they can be edited using the built-in editor, which provides basic editing, as well as annotated and then saved in any of the common image formats.
Techopedia Explains Snipping Tool
The Snipping Tool is a very versatile screen-grabbing tool as it offers the user with various methods for taking screen grabs of various portions of the screen. The typical system screenshot taken using the keyboard’s Print Screen key captures the whole screen, and it is up to the user to edit and isolate the actual areas that he/she needs using an image editing software like Paint or Photoshop. In contrast, the Snipping Tool allows the user to take a screen grab of only certain portions or entire windows, which gives the user more control. The tool saves the snips in JPG, GIF or PNG format.
Types of snips:
- Full-screen — Captures the entire screen
- Window snip — Selects a window such as the browser window, application window or dialog box
- Rectangular snip — Selects a portion of the screen by dragging the cursor to create a rectangle
- Free-form — Draws a free-form shape around an object
