How to Take a Screen Shot

Do you want to know how to take a screen shot? You may have heard that there is a way of taking screenshots of images you see on your computer, then posting windows screen shots for others to see as well. Those windows screen shots will show everything on your screen, including the toolbars and icons on your desktop. The screen snapshot is a flat image, of course, so you won’t be able to move program window once you’ve used windows screen capture. The way to do a screenshot capture to save views of program windows that you see on screen is actually very simple once you know how to use the print screen key. Read on to learn how to take a screen shot without print screen software by using Windows screen capture.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Arrange everything on your page the way you want it to look before your screenshot capture. This means getting your cursor out of the way of details for the screen snapshot, or highlighting something that you want highlighted before taking screenshots. You’ll see when you know how to take a screen shot that it’s easiest to do all this before you do the screen snapshot, rather than have to edit things afterwards. You don’t need specialized print screen software if you can manually arrange windows on your desktop the way you like them for the windows screen capture.

2. Look in the upper right corner of your keyboard. You may notice a key that is labeled “PrtSc.” This is the print screen key, which you use for taking screenshots. Press it, and your computer has just done a screenshot capture. There is no visual to let you know that the screen snapshot was successful, but it was. Clicking it more than once won’t hurt/undo the windows screen capture if you’re a type A personality like me, haha. You don’t need additional print screen software to do this. Now that you’ve learned how to take a screen shot all you need to do is import the windows screen shots images.

3. Open a picture editing program after you’ve pressed the print screen key. If you take windows screen shots you probably have Paint in the accessories program, which you can use to view and save your screen snapshot. Open that, and a new file that you’ll use for your windows screen capture image. Then hold the “Ctrl” button and click “v” at the same time. That is actually the shortcut for “paste.” It will paste the entire desktop image you took in your screenshot capture. That’s it! You can use Paint or print screen software to edit images after taking screenshots as you like. Now that you’ve learned how to take a screen shot, if you’d like more information on Windows shortcut keys, I’ve included links in my resources on this page. Good luck!

Resources

• Windows shortcut keys

[QueenofMisc]

on 2/17/2009 Thank you. I have seen the screen shots that people take and post in the forums and have been wondering how to accomplish this. Good instructions!