E-Mail Newsletters and Good Screenshots

It seems that about every week I see somebody asking questions about how to create an e-mail newsletter in CorelDRAW or how to take a screenshot. Both of these topics have been covered in previous blog posts so I'll first give you links to those and then I'll share some additional information about screenshots.

First and foremost, an "e-mail newsletter" is nothing but a Web page. CorelDRAW is not the right tool for Web pages and is thus the wrong tool for e-mail newsletters. It is a great tool for creating graphics for those newsletters. Read the post I wrote about designing e-mail newsletters.

In another post I told you about the free Greenshot tool for creating screenshots. Along with that, I mentioned that I didn't use any special tool for the thousands of screenshots I do each year for my CorelDRAW Unleashed Training DVDs. I use the PrintScreen (whole screen) and Alt + PrintScreen (active window) shortcut keys to capture what I want. Then I select File | New From Clipboard to paste the results into Corel PHOTO-PAINT. In most cases, all I need to do is save the file at that point. There are a few where I need to delete a little extra stuff that isn't relevant to the shot. Quick work with the masking tools in Corel PHOTO-PAINT gets the job done.

Often I see users talking about the resolution of screen shots. I will make this as crystal clear as I possibly can. Resolution doesn't matter! The only thing that matters is capturing the pixels exactly as they appear on screen. Some tools will upsample the image if you use a higher resolution and this actually makes the image worse. Please don't overthink screenshots, they are really easy with the information I've provided in this post.