Thursday, January 3, 2008

PC: How to Save a Picture of Your Computer Screen

On a PC, there is a key on your keyboard called Print Screen. (It may actually be an abbreviation of that.

If you need to send someone a picture of what you see on your screen, hit that key.
You just copied to the clipboard a picture of every pixel on your monitor.


Now, while everything is hanging around invisibly in your computer's memory, open an application that accepts images via the Paste command. Applications such as Photoshop, Word, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Paint, and many others will accept an image via Paste.

From there, with some of these programs, you can crop or edit the image to show just the part you need. Save, attach to e-mail and send.

In Photoshop, all you do is choose File > New and you will see that the resulting dialog box will already have the size of your "memorized picture" dimensions ready to go. Just click Okay, then Paste into the resulting empty window. Crop out what you want, then save as a Jpeg, and you can e-mail it, or transfer it via AOL/AIM.

1 comment:

kimberly applegate said...

Recently took a Vista class at my library (windows users, of course) since Vista came on my new laptop. Vista has a tool called the snipping (or snippit?) tool that lets you get an image of anything on your screen, whatever size. You drag handles like a crop box, then save it as a jpg! Love it! (though I still use the XP desktop and the kids get to use the laptop!)
Sharie