Mark Baggesen is a former Lifewire writer who has 20+ years' experience and has in web development, communications, web analytics, and databases. I also learned how to snip. Your support helps wikiHow to create more in-depth illustrated articles and videos and to share our trusted brand of instructional content with millions of people all over the world. This article has been viewed 32,732,485 times. The Print Screen key will usually be abbreviated to "PrtSc" or something similar. Best Ways to Capture a Screenshot on PC. You can open the HTML file in your computer's Internet Explorer browser in order to view its contents. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. Press "Prt Sc" once to take a pictu… Your screen won't dim if your computer has certain display settings disabled. The first, and probably the most widely used, way you can take screenshots on your PC is by … You can take high resolution screenshots in virtual machines (even greater resolution than your monitor screen). The most common file types are JPG and PNG. You may have to press the Fn key on your laptop in order to use it, as many laptops share key functions. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Photos can also be pasted into some online services, such as emails. Laptop and condensed keyboards often place the PrintScreen key on another function key. ", "The specific steps with the pictures were so easy for me to follow. It's a lossless compressed format, which means that it will take high-quality screenshots at a small file size. This wikiHow teaches you how to take a screenshot on your Windows computer. If you want to take a screenshot of the whole screen and save it as a file on the hard drive, without using any other tools, then press Windows + PrtScn on your keyboard.. Windows stores the screenshot in the Pictures library, in the Screenshots folder. ", after you hit the key(s). And the simple way to take a screenshot of your computer screen is to press the "Print Screen" key. There are obviously other ways of taking screenshots on Windows computers but … Try taking a screenshot at maximum possible resolution for getting good quality shots. If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, press and hold the "Home" and "Sleep/Wake" buttons at the same time to take a screenshot. Simply open the program that you want to paste the image into and press. ", for help. If you’re on a digital-inking-capable touch-screen PC like a Surface Pro, you can take a screenshot of your full screen simply by double clicking on the back button on a Surface Pen. You can still take screenshots using the Print Screen key or with the Snipping Tool. Saving a screenshot in some file types (such as bitmaps) will result in a very large file. Jack Lloyd is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. JPG or JPEG is the default format in Windows Vista. hold down ⊞ and Shift: and press S = Use your mouse to draw a rectangle in order to specify what to capture. Another way to take screenshots is to use the Windows Snipping Tool. :-)", both verbiage and graphic detail. Taking a Full-Screen Screenshot on Windows 8 and 10, {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/b\/bf\/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows-Step-9-Version-9.jpg\/v4-460px-Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows-Step-9-Version-9.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/b\/bf\/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows-Step-9-Version-9.jpg\/aid3450-v4-728px-Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows-Step-9-Version-9.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":342,"bigWidth":728,"bigHeight":542,"licensing":"