Thread: How to get image from the screen and then save it to a file?

I want to clip a rectangle box from the desktop and save the pixels as an image. Then save the image to a file.

So there are 2 questions:

1. what's the efficient way to get the pixels in a rectangle box on the screen? Using GetPixel in for loops is the only thing I know.

2. I want to save the image to a file. I guess saving it to .bmp is the easist, but what is the format of bmp? It would be better if I can compress it in any way with a few lines of code, BTW, I am programming in C++.

Thanks in advance!

Capturing the Screen
Storing as Bitmap

Thanks for the fast and great reply!