OS Tips – How to Take Screenshots in Windows 7

If you're curious about how to do this in Windows 7, read the rest of the post!Last week, I covered how to take screenshots in Mac OS X. For all you Windows users out there who felt left out, here’s all the information you’ll ever need on how to take screenshots in your preferred OS. It’s important to understand that you’ve essentially got two options: 1) Print Screen and 2) Snipping Tool.

Print Screen: Print Screen is a button on your keyboard usually tucked away in the far upper right hand corner. The key is also often abbreviated to PrtScn or something similar. In any case, once you hit it, you should notice your cursor flash for a second. That indicates that the system successfully copied over the entire contents of your screen to the clipboard. From there, open up your image editing program of choice (I usually just use Paint), paste with Ctrl+V, and presto – you’ve created a screenshot in Windows 7. If you want to just copy the contents of one window to the clipboard, place your cursor over the window you want to capture, hit Alt+Print Screen, and paste wherever you’d like.

Snipping Tool: If you look in the Accessories folder within your Start Menu, or type Snipping Tool into the Start Menu search box, you’ll open up this neat little application. In addition to Print Screen’s functionality, Snipping Tool also allows you to capture a rectangular or free-form snip, similar to Mac OS X’s Shift+Command+4. After you capture whatever you want, Snipping Tool presents you with a preview of your image. From there, you can save it as one of four file types, edit it with annotations or highlights, or even email it to colleagues. It even disappears when it’s within your capture area! Snipping Tool really is a very robust utility, and I use it all the time for producing screenshots for HackCollege.

How have screenshots helped you produce better work? Are there any additional tips that I missed? Let us know in the comments!