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Page 1 of 4 I frequently see people struggle with creating print-friendly screen captures. Most people know how to take a snapshot of their screen, but they aren't sure what to do with it next or how to get a nice, crisp print. In this tutorial I'll focus on three ways to do screen captures, from quick-and-dirty to top-quality printouts.
What You Need You need a Windows PC and MS Word, and Photoshop for the very best printouts. For this tutorial I'm using Windows Vista, MS Word 2003 and Photoshop CS2, but the steps below should work for most previous versions. Three Methods For Screen Captures 1. Quick and dirty: using the print screen key and MS Word (or PowerPoint) for simple, fast printouts 2. Better: using print screen and keyboard options for managing application windows, then basic image editing right inside MS Word 3. Best: using print screen or a screen capture program, then quickly letting Photoshop print it at the very best quality Taking a Screen Capture  On a Windows computer, taking a picture (often call a screen capture, screencap, or snapshot) of your computer's screen is simple. Arrange your screen as you like, and then press your keyboard's Print Screen button. Often this is abbreviated as "Prt Scrn" and by convention is located in the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard:
A note for laptop users: to save space, laptop manufacturers often "double up" buttons on the keyboard with more than one function. To take a screencap, you may need to hold down an option or function button on your particular keyboard while pressing the Print Screen button. If you see a box or color around the Print Screen button text, look for a corresponding option or function button elsewhere on your keyboard. What the Deuce? I Pressed Print Screen and Nothing Happened! Actually, it did. Pressing the Print Screen button places an image into your computer's memory. Typically you won't see any visual indication that anything happened, but it's there. You can now insert it into most applications.
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