How to do a Screen Shot?
Iain Laskey shows you how to get what's on your screen into a document or printed
One of the tasks that most confuses people is getting a copy of what's on their screen into a document or printed. It's actually quite simple but not that obvious which is the main cause of the problem.
Before we go any further, we need to make clear that this technique mainly works for normal Windows type images. If you want to capture a frame of a playing video or a DirectX game, this won't usually work. For those you need specialised programs designed to do that particular task. It's always worth trying though as some programs such as VLC media Player do show the video image when captured but be aware that it's not guaranteed.
Grabbing the Image
Get what you want showing on the screen then press the 'Prnt Scrn' button. This is usually on the top right of the keyboard somewhere. At this point, you'd like to think it would then print your screen. No such luck. What it does do is to copy the screen image into the cut and paste buffer.
Pasting or Printing?
If you want the image in a document such as Microsoft Word, put the cursor where you want to place the screen shot and select paste. Your screen shot will be inserted into your document. Alternatively, if using a graphics or photo editing program, there is usually an option with a name like 'Paste as New Image' which does exactly what it says. From here, you can crop, resize or edit as required.
If you need to print the screen shot, you have to do it by pasting into a document or image file first then printing that. You can't directly print the screen to the printer.
Selecting a Window
Sometimes you just want to grab a single window rather than the whole screen. In those cases, first select the window you want to be grabbed then press and hold the Alt key then 'Prnt Scrn'. Then paste as above. The currently active window will then be pasted.
It's as easy as that!
