How to Use Print Screen

There is a key on your computer keyboard that is called the windows print screen key. People who know how to use print screen in windows are well aware about the utility and ability of this key. This is a seemingly dormant key as we have all seen this key, but we rarely use it. The nomenclature of this key is 'PrtScn' and once we see what kind of tasks it performs, we will not doubt its usefulness. Different manufacturers of computers have different methods of naming this key, but its location stays pretty much the same in every keyboard.

The position of this key is right after the function keys, and there are many amongst us who think that pressing this button directly commands the computer to take a printout of the current screen. This is not true, as the function of this key is to take a snapshot of your current computer screen and then store it on your clipboard for further use. The clipboard is an invisible medium of sorts that comes into play whenever we are transferring and files or folders. Whenever we cut or copy something, the item is temporarily stored on the clipboard, before we actually go and paste it elsewhere. Thus we use print screen to capture screen shots onto our clipboard.

Now that we know, we can use print screen to copy the screen we currently see, let's see how to take a screenshot and actually go about using it.

• Open the screen that you wish to copy.
• Now press the print screen key ('PrtScn'), and the mirror image of that screen will be stored on your desktop.
• Now you need to open an image editing application like Microsoft Paint for instance.
• Paste the screen shot here either by pressing Control+V, or by going to the Edit menu and then selecting Paste.
• Now, you can either enlarge this image or you can even crop it, as you may see fit.
• Save the file at a suitable location and it is now ready for use. You can either view it and use it for some other purpose or you can even send it to someone else.

You can even use print screen on laptop for a similar purpose, but you will have to locate the key first. Different brands of laptops have different nomenclatures and different positions for the print screen key.

There are 2 things that you must remember once you have learned how to use print screen. Firstly, the image that you save, will be saved in the Bitmap (.bmp) format. You can also change the format to GIF. Do not use the JPEG format as this makes the text unclear and blurry sometimes. Secondly, you can press ALT + PrtScn to copy a screen shot of a selected window on your screen, instead of the entire screen itself. This tool means that you do not have to crop the image in your image editing program.

Using Print Screen in Mac OS
An Apple Mac is very different from a machine using Windows XP or Windows Vista Operating System, and it does not contain a print screen button. This does not mean that this machine cannot perform this task. As a matter of fact it can, but the method of doing so is slightly different from that of a Windows based computer. You can use one of the following methods.

Method # 1

• Open the screen that you wish to capture.
• Press the 'Apple' key + Shift + 3 together and then release all.
• Using your mouse, click on the window.
• The image of your screen shot will automatically be saved on your desktop.

Method # 2

• This is for capturing just a portion of your screen.
• Open the screen and press the Apple key + Shift + 4.
• The mouse cursor will change to a + sign. You can use this to drag and highlight the area that you want to capture.
• Once you have done that you will see the file of your saved image on your desktop.

Method # 3

• This method is used to capture a screen shot of a particular application window.
• Open the screen and press the Apple key + Shift + 4 and then release all.
• The mouse cursor will change to a +. Press Space bar once and the mouse cursor will further change to the shape of a camera.
• Use the camera cursor to click on the application window which you wish to capture.
• The captured screen shot image will be saved on your desktop.

Once you have figured out and mastered how to use print screen in windows and in Mac, you can utilize it for a number of purposes. It is indeed a very handy tool and one that has been around ever since computers began being widely circulated. Even though not many people know its exact and proper use, the print screen button is a highly useful key.