If you have ever wondered how to take a screen shot of a computer program or something that is showing on your computer screen, here is a super quick tutorial that will make it easy for you…
To take a screen shot of your entire screen space, just click the “PRT SCR” button on your keyboard. You’ll find it on the top row towards the right side of the keyboard (it stands for Print Screen). If you only want to take a screen shot of the program or window that you have open, hold down the ALT button and then click PRT SCR. This will only print the screen you are currently viewing…
Clicking the PRT SCR button copies the image to your Clipboard. That is an invisible file where your computer “remembers” what you copy so that you can paste it somewhere else. It is always at work behind the scenes when you copy & paste.
Next you want to open your image editing program (such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and click File > New. It should automatically create a new file the same size as the screen shot you just took. Once the blank file is created, simply ‘paste’ and the screen shot will paste right into the file.
To paste you can go to Edit > Paste, or you can click CTRL+V on your keyboard – or right click your mouse and choose Paste from the menu (however you are used to pasting information is fine).
Now you can edit or crop the screen shot, and save it! You will want to save it as a JPG file. In most image editing programs you can simply click File > Save As and choose the format and file name.
Best,
14 responses so far ↓
Sandra Sims // May 21, 2007 at 10:20 pm
SnagIt makes the process of screen shots a lot faster and easier. Especially when you want to just copy a certain section of the screen. It’s made by the same company that does Camtasia, http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp
Lynn Terry // May 21, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Good find! Thanks, Sandra
Carrie Wigal // May 21, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Wow, that’s pretty cool. I always thought you had to have a special software program to do that. Thanks for the tip!
Angela Wills // May 21, 2007 at 11:06 pm
I’ve been using the free trial of Snag It! and it is a great program.
I also used it to grab a full salespage I did for a client and so when people want to see what I’ve done I can have a copy of that page even if the client has taken it down
Lynn Terry // May 21, 2007 at 11:30 pm
SnagIt sounds like a cool program, and something I would get a lot of use out of for the price.
Of course, for simple screen shots, the method above is the easy & free way to capture basic images of your screen.
Jack Keifer // May 22, 2007 at 10:06 am
Another cool trick you can do with Print Screen - press the “ALT” key and hold it down while pressing “PrtScr” and you can copy just an open window instead of the entire screen. For example, a dialog message box or a browser window.
Jack Keifer // May 22, 2007 at 10:08 am
Oooops, you already mentioned that, d’oh!
Angela Wills // May 22, 2007 at 11:01 am
Yes that’s a great tip! Many people don’t realize it’s that easy to grab an actual shot of the screen.
I tried it with the CTRL PrtScn before and the quality was terrible but I think that must of been because I was pasting it into Windows ‘Paint’ and not a good graphics program.
Lynn Terry // May 22, 2007 at 11:10 am
I’ve never tried using the CTRL button before - just the Print Screen button or ALT+Prt Scr. Anyway, yes - Paint generally doesnt give good results. There are plenty of other graphic program options though…
Teli Adlam // May 22, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I have a funny client story with the print screen button and Photoshop, but I’ll leave that for another day.
I can also throw my vote in for Snag It. For simple jobs, as you say Lynn, then print screen and a graphic editing program will do.
Snag It is more of an industrial strength screen capture utility which allows the user to capture just a portion of a screen, a scrolling window, and open application, snag all the images from a web page, and even take quick video of the screen. What makes it nifty is that it has a basic editor built in so you can quickly crop, add borders, and do various visual effects to an image or you can have it send the screen shot to another program, such as Photoshop, for more advanced editing.
Definitely great to have around if you do a lot of tutorials or are in a field which requires lots of screen snapping.
~ Teli
Lynn Terry // May 22, 2007 at 12:52 pm
What a teaser! I want to hear the story :p
Andrew Peacock // May 23, 2007 at 4:08 am
There’s also a firefox plugin that does similar, including capturing more of the window than is currently displayed on-screen. I can’t remember the name or URL, but I’m sure it’s easy to find.
Andy
Sandra Sims // May 23, 2007 at 11:48 pm
The free SnagIt trial is great.. be careful it can be addictive.
Graphixer // Mar 30, 2008 at 9:02 am
I like Paint Shop Pro 7 very much. Anyway I also notice that work done in PSP and later on saving it as JPG/JPEG will not produce a good image. So snagit help me to capture my work in PSP and then later saving it as jpeg rather than saving it as JPEG/JPG from within PSP. Snagit is very good.
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