How to take a screenshot of your desktop and edit the image (crop/annotate/encapsulate) using KolourPaint in Ubuntu
Being able to take screenshots of your desktop and edit it is a very useful functionality. It enables one to capture, for example, an error, highlight a specific area that you want attention to be drawn to and share it with someone who could possibly help you. I, for one, know that it is very useful in an office setting. You can take a screenshot of your desktop when you are stuck due to some error, share it instantly with your colleague who already has experience fixing this issue and get it resolved in no time. Or you can share it on sites like StackOverflow where the StackOverflow community could help you. To summarize, it is a feature I use almost daily.
I use Paint on Windows to do this. But, initially, I didn’t know of any softwares for Ubuntu. I tried a couple of them and now, I would like to introduce KolourPaint. You can experiment with other softwares.
1) Figuring out the key combinations you need to press to take a screenshot and copy it to the clipboard
In Windows, if you press the ‘PrtScr’ button, you can paste it on to the Paint window by pressing the buttons ‘Ctrl’ and ‘V’. But, it is slightly different in Ubuntu.
In Ubuntu, first, you will need to find the appropriate key combinations for capturing the screenshot. On Ubuntu 18.04 , pressing ‘Ctrl’ and ‘PtrScr’ buttons at the same time will capture the screenshot and copy it to the keyboard. Then you can press ‘Ctrl’ + ‘V’ to paste it somewhere.
You can visit this link to view all the options. This link also has the options for Ubuntu 16.04.
2) Install the software.
I want to be able to edit the screenshot. For example, crop it, type something over it or circle some portion in red colour etc.
For this purpose, I use a software called KolourPaint. You can install it from Ubuntu Software Centre. Or from the terminal by typing the following commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install kolourpaintYou can also try out other softwares.
3. An example
i. Open KolourPaint
ii. Take a screenshot of the desired window by pressing Ctrl+PtrScr and then paste it on to the KolourPaint window by pressing Ctrl+V as shown below.
iii. Edit the screenshot
As you can see above, I have edited the image. The goal is to encapsulate a portion of the image using a blue rectangle. I have performed 4 steps (1,2,3,4 → these are marked in the image above) in order to do this:
1 -> Select the required color by pressing the left and right buttons of the mouse or the touchpad of your laptop. In this case, blue.
2 -> Select the ‘rectangle’ icon which will enable you to draw rectangles on the image.
3 -> After performing steps 1 and 2, you can draw a rectangle over any area of the image.
4-> By clicking the ‘text’ icon, you can insert text anywhere in the image. It is using this tool that I have inserted the numbers 1,2,3 and 4 in the image above.
Crop the Image
Step 1 : Click on the selection tool as shown above.
Step 2 : Make the selection (You can see a dotted rectangle around the blue rectangle which encapsulates the area with the title “Take a screenshot”).
Step 3 : In the toolbar on the top, click Selection -> Set as Image(Crop). You will get the cropped image. This can be saved by clicking File -> Save or by pressing Ctrl+S keys.
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