Tutorial: How to Take a Screenshot

written by waterwaif

Being a seller on Etsy, I sometimes find my items in treasuries that other sellers make. These are always such beautiful collections that I want to take a screenshot, or screen capture, and share these with other people. In talking to a few of my friends the other day, I realized that some of them did not know how to do this. It's super easy. Watch!


Make sure you have the webpage that you want to capture centered on your screen. Look at your keyboard and find the 'Print Screen' button. This is usually somewhere near the top right, to the right of the F12 key.


In some systems, it works fine for you to just press the 'Print Screen' button, but with mine, I have to press 'Ctrl' and 'Print Screen' at the same time. Some systems require you to press 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' at the same time. Try one, test it with the next step or two, and if that doesn't work, try it the other way.


After you've captured your screen, you need to have somewhere to put it!
The easiest place is in your Paint. If you have Windows, you almost certainly have Paint. Look in your start menu.
Start Menu --> All Programs --> Accessories


Once Paint is open, you will see a blank screen. Perfect for pasting your screen capture!
Up at the top in Paint, you will see the Paint menu. Click on Edit and select Paste. Your screenshot will be pasted right there! If Paste is not an available option, that means that your screen was not captured. Try capturing it again with the step I listed above. Try 'Ctrl' and 'Print Screen' together or 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' together, and test it by checking the Edit menu in Paint.


Now that you've taken your screenshot and found somewhere to put it, you could be done! If you like using images as bitmaps or find that it doesn't matter to you either way, then just save your screenshot and you're done.
If you want to crop or otherwise edit the photo, save it and reopen it using your photo editing software. When you save it after editing, it's best to save it as a jpeg. How to edit the photo is a tutorial for another day. I hope this post helped someone!




Edited to add Jenn's comment for those on Macs. Thanks, Jenn!

Jenn said...

If you're on a Mac, you can hit Command-Shift-4 and it will give you a little cross-hairs icon. Position that at one corner of the area you want to capture and press the mouse button. Holding down the mouse button, draw a box encompassing everything you want in your screenshot. When you release the mouse button, you'll hear a camera-shutter sound and you should be able to find your screenshot ready-to-go on your desktop.