Product screenshots appear on landing pages, in documentation, in app stores and in pitch decks. Treating them as throwaway captures is a common and visible mistake.

Capture at High Resolution

  • Use a high-DPI (retina) display to capture. A screenshot taken on a standard-resolution screen looks soft on modern displays and cannot be improved afterwards.
  • Capture at 2× and display at 1×. Set explicit display dimensions so the browser scales the retina file down rather than showing it at full pixel size.
  • Never upscale a screenshot. Interface text is the least forgiving content there is for interpolation — recapture instead.
  • If your display isn't high-DPI, use a browser's device-emulation mode to capture at 2× or 3× device pixel ratio.

Clean the Data First

The content in your screenshot is part of the message:

  • Replace lorem ipsum and test data with realistic, plausible content. "asdf asdf" in a screenshot destroys credibility instantly.
  • Use consistent, believable names, numbers and dates. Avoid dates in the past or nonsensical values.
  • Remove personal and internal information: real customer names, email addresses, internal URLs, account IDs, API keys. Screenshot leaks are a genuine security problem.
  • Hide browser clutter: bookmark bars, extensions, other tabs, notification badges. Use a clean profile or a private window.
  • Set the interface to a neutral state: no error banners, no half-filled forms, no dropdown left open unless that's the point.

Crop for the Message

  • Show only what the caption talks about. A full-screen capture with one relevant button is a worse illustration than a tight crop of that region.
  • Keep enough context for the reader to know where they are — a section header, a tab bar.
  • Consistent crops across a series look designed; ragged, arbitrary ones look rushed.
  • Consider a device frame for mobile screenshots: it signals context immediately. Keep it simple and current; a dated phone frame ages your product.

Annotate Sparingly

  • One or two callouts per screenshot maximum. Arrows, a highlighted rectangle or a subtle spotlight effect.
  • Consistent style — same colour, same stroke width, same font across all screenshots.
  • Use a colour that doesn't appear in your UI, so annotations read as overlay rather than interface.
  • Blur or block sensitive fields with solid shapes, not light blur, which can be reversed.

Format and Delivery

  • PNG for screenshots, always. Interface text is high-contrast and sharp-edged — exactly what JPEG compression damages most. A JPEG screenshot shows ringing artifacts around every letter.
  • If file size is a problem, crop tighter or reduce the palette rather than switching to JPEG. Screenshots of flat UI compress well as PNG-8 with reduced colours.
  • WebP (lossless) is a good modern alternative that keeps the crispness at smaller size.
  • Name files descriptively and keep the originals — you will need to recapture when the UI changes, and having the exact state documented helps.

Finally, schedule screenshot maintenance. Nothing dates a marketing page faster than screenshots of a UI that no longer exists, and outdated screenshots quietly undermine trust in everything else on the page.