Sometimes it is the simpler tasks that go unnoticed when it comes to questions floating about. One of which has been “how do I make a screenshot on my PC?”. For some, the answer is simple. For others, they haven’t gotten that far yet when it comes to getting a comfortable feel of their PC. So, here is a quick tutorial on how to take a screenshot within Windows. It’s easy, it is fast, and it works in all versions of Windows OS.
There are two ways to pull this off. Either can achieve what you are looking for, but one of them focuses on a specific window.
1) Taking a screenshot of your entire screen
This is the easiest of the two incredibly easy methods. Make sure you have what you want to be seen on your screen, on your screen. Then find the key on your keyboard that says “Print Screen”. This is usually located above the arrow keys (sometimes if using a laptop with limited space, it might be paired with another key). Press the “Print Screen” key and this will trigger Windows to copy the screen into your clipboard (into memory), making it ready to be pasted somewhere.
The quickest way to do this is to click on your start menu icon at the bottom left of your screen, and immediately type “paint”. You’ll see the Paint application pop up into the list. Click on this to open Microsoft Paint. Inside of Paint, simply click on “Paste” in the menu and your screenshot will now be displayed in Paint. From here, you can either save it to a file or many any edits/changes as needed, using Paint (then save it).
So you hit Print Screen to “copy” your screen, and then find an application to “paste” it into. Done.
As you can see in the image above, the entire desktop is pasted into Paint. On the desktop, we just have one browser open with our website loaded. You can also see the desktop background, as well as the start bar and icons (we don’t have any icons on that desktop as you can see). If you have anything else open on your desktop, you would see that as well.
If all you want to do is focus on a certain section of the screen, you can use the selection tool to highlight what you want, and then hit “crop” to cut everything else out of the image. If that specific something is a specific application window (ie, just a browser window displaying a website), then you can crop it out like this, or you can use the next method.
2) Taking a screenshot of a specific window displayed on the screen
So, let’s say that all you want is just a specific window on the desktop and not the entire desktop. This would be a browser like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, or any other “window” that is displayed on a screen–such as an error window, mail program, your start menu, or like some of our screenshots we have here of Microsoft Paint. You can use the above method and crop them out, or you can take a screenshot of just that window from the start.
To do this is just as easy but requires one more key to press (and hold). You start off making sure the window you want to capture is selected as the active window. Do this by just clicking anywhere on that window (like the titlebar of that window). This is so Windows knows what you are trying to capture. Then, press and hold the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard. There are two of these, one on each side of the spacebar, just a few keys away. While pressing “Ctrl”, press “Print Screen” and you’re done (you can let go of the key now).
So you hold Ctrl and hit Print Screen to “copy” your screen, and then find an application to “paste” it into. Done. Similar to the first method, but one extra key involved.
Now a screenshot has been copied of just that window and it is now ready to be pasted into Paint (or any other application of your choosing). You can see in the image above that the image pasted into Paint is just the single window. In our case, a browser window with our website loaded.
As promised, the method is quite easy and only requires a few button presses. You can have a screenshot ready for posting to the world within seconds.
There are 3rd party applications that specialize in screenshots and even screen recording. For screen recording, we are big fans of programs like Movavi (user-friendly) or OBS Studio (more complex, free, and best for live streaming). These offer more advanced options, but typically, the built-in method works out for most everyone when it comes to something like this (basic screenshots).
