Have you ever had something show up on your computer screen, and you wish you could save that image for something? Well, it’s really not as hard as you think. Let me tell you about a little secret that the pros have used for years.
Every standard keyboard made for IBM compatible computers has a little button called “Print Screen” (possibly “PrtScn”). You’ve probably noticed it and tried using it; but nothing happened, right? Wrong. Actually, something did happen, but you couldn’t see it. What happened is that the image of your screen was copied to the windows clipboard.
You can paste that image into anything that will accept an image, such as Microsoft Word. Better yet, you can paste that image into your paint program and crop it. Cropping an image means to cut off the parts you don’t want, and just keeping the parts you do want. Or, more correctly, to decide what part of the image you do want, and let the paint program get rid of the rest.
To crop an image, pick the crop tool in your paint program. Using your mouse, place the cursor over one corner of what you want to save. Click the left mouse button and hold it. While holding the button, move the cursor to the opposite corner of what you want and then release the mouse button. Finally, click “crop” on your program’s menu.
Now that picture of the kids, which was coming through Skype or that funny comic you wanted to save are all right there where you can have them. If it shows up on your computer screen, you can grab it as a screenshot, and do with it as you will.