And Edit It

Just like a computer, your iPad or iPad Pro has the ability to take and save screenshots. If you are running iOS 11 or later, you can also edit those screenshots, to some extent, without ever needing to bring them into a third party app such as Photoshop. Today, I’m going to walk you through how to take a screenshot on your iPad and then how to edit that screenshot using the Instant Markup feature so you can create engaging and great looking screenshots right from your iPad.

Taking a Screenshot

First, let’s walk through how you actually take a screenshot on an iPad or iPad Pro. The process is pretty easy to do.

1. Open whatever app or apps you want to grab a screenshot of on your device.

2. Press and hold the On/Off/Sleep/Wake button on the top of your iPad.

3. Quickly press the Home button.

4. Release both buttons simultaneously.

Congratulations, you just took your first screenshot on your iPad or iPad Pro. Now remember, the buttons you are pressing do other things, so you must be careful. One of the most common mistakes people make when snapping screenshots is holding the buttons too long or not pressing them at the same time. This will, of course, cause one of the other buttons to perform it’s alternate action. Most commonly I see people accidentally activating Siri. But, if you hold the first button and then press and release the Home button quickly, you should be able to avoid this annoying mixup.

Editing a Screenshot

While you can do anything too drastic with your photos, unless you make use of many third party apps that are available on the App Store, you can perform some basic edits and annotations to your screenshot.

When you first capture a screenshot, a small version of it will appear in the bottom corner of your iPad for a few seconds, assuming you have iOS 11 or later installed on your device. When it does, tap on it. This will bring you to the Instant Markup screen. From here, there are several things you can do to your screenshot before you save it.

• Marker – The marker allows you to make notes and annotate areas of the screenshot in a marker style with a variety of colors and even a variety of thicknesses.
• Pencil – If you are looking for more of a pencil look to your annotations, this is the tool for you. It works much like the marker, only the appearance more closely resembles a pencil than it does a market or a pen.
• Highlighter – Another one that does exactly what it sounds like, this tool will let you highlight specific areas of your screenshot. This is one of my personal favorites.
• Magic Rope – This is a pretty handy tool that will allow you to make selections and annotate specific areas of your screenshot. In some cases, you can even erase or move parts of the screenshot if need be.
• Add a text field – Another one of my personal favorites, this tool will enable you to add text fields of typed text to annotate your screenshot. I love this one as I’m not that great a writer even with the Apple Pencil. Trust me, my handwriting is already messy enough.
• Signature – If you have a created a signature in Preview that you like to use, this tool will let you add it to your screenshot with just a few taps of your finger.
• Magnifier – This is a pretty cool tool you can use to focus everyone’s eyes on one specific area of your screenshot. This tool will magnify an area you select so it’s larger than everything else. This means you can show everyone pretty quickly what they are looking for and is really handy if you are writing a guide on how to do things on your iPad.
• Shapes – This tool will allow you to add boxes, arrows and much more to your screenshot. This is a great way to point out various areas of your screenshot in a nice and clean fashion that is easy to read.

During the edit process, if you make a mistake, you can undo the previous step by tapping on the Undo button, so don’t worry about messing up your screenshot when you edit it. You can always undo your happy little accidents as Bob Ross would say.

Once you complete your screenshot, you can always save it to your Photos library if you wish, or you can tap on the Share button to share it with others using social media, email, cloud storage, and more.

Parting Thoughts

Taking a screenshot on an iPad is a pretty simple process, but if you don’t know how to do it, it can be difficult the first time to figure out. Now that you know, you should be able to easily create amazing screenshots on your iPad and iPad Pro and mark them up however you see fit.

Do you have any questions about taking screenshots on your iPad or iPad Pro? If so, comment below and I will do my best to answer your questions.