Evernote Screen clipping or Screen shots has become my favourite Evernote Feature . The ability to take a screenshot has long been a critical in the business world. As distrustful as the world is there’s always need to prove what we’ve been up too. Now more often than not I want to share a bit of my screen and not the list of tabs I have open, or my dodgy wallpaper.

The way it was

Now prior to Evernote getting a business friendly screenshot was a multi-step process that just slowed down the process of cranking through my email inbox.

Traditionally it would go something like this:

• hit the Prt-Scr buttons (making a camera clicking sound as you take your screenshot  is optional)
• Ctrl-V and paste your screenshot in your *image editor
• Crop your screenshot
• Save your edited screenshot as an image
• Attach

* I know most of the nice email editors have an image editor for your screen shots and I know the editing can be done in the email editor. The point is it still needs to be done and a lot of people use Gmail. So there.

While the Evernote Pc application is running hitting the print screen key will bring up a little undocked window and some crawling ants to be manipulated. Move the ants around until you’ve selected the area of the screen you want to clip and Hey presto you’re done. You now have a clipped screen shot of only the area of the screen you chose for your screenshot.
In evernote 3.5 the crawling ants have been replaced by line guides that follow you cursor as you take your screenshot.

Uses for the Evernote Screen shot Clipping:

• I’ve been using Evernote screenshots for sending shots of dynamic data from my pc, these screenshots are very useful for websites with changing content  like sports sites, news sites and analytics data
• I’ve been using Evernote for clipping articles from sites that I am probably not going to visit again. So I have have a notebook with articles I’ve happened upon and taken a screenshot of for later reading offline in Evernote. The Evernote text recognition is really useful in this regard making your list of articles searchable should I be looking for some specific reading in my downtime.
• I’ve also been using Evernote for clipping art I like from sites I come across. This way I can get a clipped screenshot of a piece of art with the link to it in the note so I can keep track of reference images for art projects and stock images for blog posts.
• I’ve also been using it more and more to take screen shots of sites I’m working on and then using the web clipping in order to get colour values in my image editor. Making digital web clipping swatches.
• screenshots are also pretty useful for keeping bits of IM conversations. If you don’t want to save a whole conversation. Print screen keep the bit you need to keep and there you go.

Have a look at my shared Monetize folder in evernote for examples of web clippings I’ve made in evernote

For more Evernote help see:

• All my evernote Posts
• How to use Evernote lists for setting and keeping track of your goals
• Use Evernote to setup your GTD system Part 1 – Collect your stuff
• Use Evernote to setup your GTD system Part 2 – Capture your stuff
• Practical ways I use Evernote to simplify my work and personal life

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunadirimmel/96824518/sizes/s/#cc_license.

Here I am back from visiting the Survival Guru and as ususal I was humbled by my travels and have returned to my blog with two little insights I want to discuss. See I often allow myself to forget that before all else this is a blog. Which is something Survival Guru has gotten spot on. Go read her blog lots of interesting questions to keep you out of sleep. She’s also has a book out and is finishing up another so check in and support one of our own.

Ok Back to why we’re here, while wandering around Survival Guru I actually popped in and commented on this post Why we forget the little things (the post was sadly lost when Winnie moved her site). It’s a very short post with a very powerful idea. What I took from it is simply this, why focus on the big bad things lying all over the place. focus on the things which you’re grateful for first. Then take some time to pay them back. What we focus on grows. Spend more time on the positives in your life and you’ll find your perception of your plight will change. Over and above that you’ll use your energy on the positive parts of your life, the parts that energize you. Taking the time start by looking the things you’re grateful for first makes a world of difference in your happiness. It’s the motivational equivalent of paying yourself first. The bad things that happen will get taken care of however if you ignore the good in your life it may never return. Read more »

So if you’ve gone  through the steps so far for collecting your clutter into Evernote then you’ll already be well on your way toward using Evernote for goal tracking . We started by collecting all our clutter and then we went about capturing it into Evernote. So if we’ve done everything correctly up until now we have a system filled with all the related information pertaining to our goals for the coming year, and we’ve stored it all in a trusted system. Read more »