Screen Captures

I have had a few people ask me what is the key that says Prt Scrn for? Well, in the olden days it used to be that you would press that key and whatever was on the screen would be printed.

Now it is used to capture a picture of the screen and sends it to the clipboard. There are two options for the capture:

  1. To capture everything on the screen, press the Prt Scrn key.
  2. To capture only the currently active window, press Alt and Prt Scrn keys at the same time.

You will have to save your capture to a graphics program to save it.

XP’s built in Paint or, if it is installed, Microsoft Photo Editor would be the cheapest means of accomplishing the save. You could also use any program capable of pasting your screen capture and saving it such as Paint Shop Pro, IrfanView, etc.

There are more capable screen capture programs available, both free and paid, with a lot more options.

For more information search Google for “screen capture software”.

I use Gadwin PrintScreen 2.6, the latest release, I believe it is 3.1, is available at gadwin.com and is a freeware product.

Retired, grandfather, blogger, participating in creative writing prompt blogs, and love to read.