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I've seen a number of posts where people capture snapshots of parts of a PDF. This post by Marcos Villagra is one example.

How does one do this ?

Update: Marcos has edited his answer to contain actual text instead of a snapshot, so the example linked above is no longer operative.

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  • $\begingroup$ Simply pressing "printscreen" and make it into a picture? $\endgroup$
    – Hsien-Chih Chang 張顯之
    Dec 7, 2010 at 6:48
  • $\begingroup$ well, in Mac is easier. You just press command+shift+4 and a selection tool appears. Then you just mark the portion of the screen you want, and a png file is created in your desktop with part of the screen you selected. I don't know if Windows or any other Linux environment has a similar function. In general "print screen" with some software for cutting the picture should work. $\endgroup$
    – Marcos Villagra
    Dec 7, 2010 at 8:05
  • $\begingroup$ the only problem is if doing this would violate any copyright of the authors. If the paper is referenced inside the post shouldn't be any problem right? $\endgroup$
    – Marcos Villagra
    Dec 7, 2010 at 8:10
  • $\begingroup$ such tiny snippets would presumably fall under fair use ? $\endgroup$
    – Suresh Venkat
    Dec 7, 2010 at 8:30
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    $\begingroup$ I personally don't like them because search does not work, typing or copying the text is the better way to go. Also it makes reading harder and the text of questions nonuniform. I don't see why one would like to use a snippet instead, and think we should discourage them. $\endgroup$
    – Kaveh
    Dec 7, 2010 at 14:05
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    $\begingroup$ @Kaveh: I am not sure about discouraging including text as an image, but I agree that it is not ideal. I do not try hard to answer questions when I do not think that the asker has made an appropriate effort, and text as an image certainly gives me a negative impression. Just my two cents. $\endgroup$
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Dec 7, 2010 at 17:47
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    $\begingroup$ I guess this is meta, so this is to be expected :), but why doesn't anyone actually post an answer (looking at you, Hsien-Chih and Marcos) $\endgroup$
    – Suresh Venkat
    Dec 7, 2010 at 17:50
  • $\begingroup$ @Suresh, Tsuyoshi: sorry, I sometimes use words that are stronger than what I mean. :) $\endgroup$
    – Kaveh
    Dec 7, 2010 at 21:02
  • $\begingroup$ Tsuyoshi makes a good point. Copy-pasting an image is lazy. Personally, I saw it in other posts and in my screen they look very clean. But if making a search makes the information harder to find, they should be discouraged as Kaveh says. $\endgroup$
    – Marcos Villagra
    Dec 7, 2010 at 22:26
  • $\begingroup$ I've just edited my answer in the post and it really looks more nicer/uniform that way. $\endgroup$
    – Marcos Villagra
    Dec 7, 2010 at 22:36
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    $\begingroup$ @Marcos: Thanks for taking time to convert to text. Sorry, I did not intend to address my previous comment to you (actually I had overlooked the fact that the question contained an example). I understand that we are all reasonably lazy in the sense that we want to spend more time on more important things, and converting image to text is not the most important thing. I should have said that text as text adds more value to the question than text as image (because it allows search). With that said, if you are happy with the result of replacing the image by text in your question, I am happy too. $\endgroup$
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Dec 10, 2010 at 19:38

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In mac its very easy. You press command+shift+4 and a selection tools appears as your pointer. You then select the portion of the screen that you want to copy, and then automatically it creates a file in the desktop containing an image of what you selected.

I don't know if Windows or some Linux environment have a similar functionality. You can always "print-screen" and then cut the image with an additional software.

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  • $\begingroup$ +1: Adobe Acrobat Reader also allows for cropping a part of a pdf document: Tools->Select & Zoom->Snapshot tool $\endgroup$
    – Kaveh
    Dec 7, 2010 at 23:16
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I usually do this when posting a figure from pdf; since I'm using Windows, by pressing "printscreen" key on the upper-right part of the keyboard and pasting the screen image to some kind of editor (say mspaint), I can save it as a picture and upload it.

This cause just a little work, but I'm happy to see if there's a better way.

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    $\begingroup$ The snapshot tool of Acrobat Reader also works in Windows and I think it gives a better quality picture. $\endgroup$
    – Kaveh
    Dec 8, 2010 at 3:18
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In addition to the internal functionality of your PDF viewer, you may also try a screenshot tool. There are a lot of free/commercial tools you can use.

I use a commercial one named Snagit. It is very powerful and you'll love it if you use it. I highly recommend using the trial version for 30 days and see it for yourself.

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