How to make a PDF from a screenshot

Screenshots go straight into a PDF with File > New in PDF by Zaweba. Choose From a screen capture and the app captures every monitor, stepping its own window out of the way first so it isn't in the picture. Or, if you've already taken a screenshot, choose From the clipboard and the copied picture becomes a PDF page.

People do this to keep proof of something on screen: a payment confirmation, an error message for a support team, a booking, a settings page before it's changed, or a chat that needs to be filed with other papers.

Capturing the screen

Get the screen looking the way you want it captured, with the right window open and scrolled to the right place. Then go to PDF by Zaweba and choose File > New > From a screen capture.

The app steps aside before taking the capture, so you get your screen, not PDF by Zaweba. Every monitor is captured. The new PDF opens in a tab, not yet saved. Check it, then save it.

If you have more than one monitor and only want part of what was captured, Pages > Crop pages lets you drag a rectangle round the part to keep.

From a screenshot you've already taken

The Windows screenshot tools, and the Print Screen key, put a picture on the clipboard. If you use Clip by Zaweba, it remembers pictures you've copied as well as text, so a screenshot from earlier can be put back on the clipboard first.

With a screenshot on the clipboard, choose File > New > From the clipboard. The picture becomes a page of a new PDF. The same command works with copied text, and with files you've copied in File Explorer, so it's a general way of turning whatever you've just copied into a PDF.

Building a document of screenshots

One screenshot is easy. Ten, for a set of instructions or a record of steps, need a little organisation.

Make the PDF from the first screenshot, then add the rest as you take them. PDF by Zaweba can insert pages from the clipboard into the open document, so take a screenshot, insert it, take the next and insert that. Drag thumbnails if any end up in the wrong order.

If you've saved the screenshots as picture files instead, File > New > From pictures makes one PDF from the lot, a page per picture.

Once the pages are together, the comment tools can add arrows, boxes and text boxes to point things out, which makes a set of screenshots into a proper how-to guide or a clear bug report.

Things to watch

Screenshots capture everything on the screen, including notifications, open tabs and private details you may have forgotten about. Look before you send. If there's something on a page that shouldn't be seen, use the redaction tools, which remove the content, rather than drawing a box over it.

A screenshot is a picture, so its words can't be selected or searched like typed text. For a web page you want to keep with real text, File > New > From a web page is the better choice.

PDF by Zaweba is free software for Windows that works offline with no account, so your screenshots become PDFs on your own computer.