It would seem taking screenshots in Windows is simple.
There's a button dedicated to this on almost every keyboard called the Print Screen key.
Pressing this key captures the entire screen or multiple screens if you have more than one monitor.
And it copies it to the clipboard.
While this method works, it's the old school way.
It requires you to paste the screen capture into paint just to save it Fortunately there are easier and faster ways to grab your screen in Windows.
Here's how.
A new screen capture hotkey combination was introduced with Windows 10.
Holding the Windows key and pressing the Print Screen button will instantly save a screenshot as an image.
You can find the screen captures under This PC/pictures/screenshot The problem is this still captures the entire display including a second screen if you have one.
If you want to capture just a single open window without everything else hold + Alt or pressing the print screen button.
This captures just the current active window.
Sadly, with this hot key you still need to paste the capture in the paint to save it.
But of course, there is a work around.
If you use Microsoft's OneDrive which comes pre-installed, you can opt to have all screen captures saved to your cloud storage automatically.
In OneDrive you can find this under settings, auto save and then check the box beside automatically save screenshots I capture to OneDrive You can find all screen captures under OneDrive/pictures/screenshost.
Dropbox for Windows also have a similar feature if you prefer it instead.
Windows also comes with a fairly robust screen capture tool installed.
It's called the Snipping Tool.
And it's your best bet if you need more precise screen captures Click the Start button, start typing snipping tool and click on the app to open it.
With snipping tool you can capture an active window entire screen, precise rectangles or use a free form select tool.
You can capture screenshots on a delay and annotate them within a snipping tool as well.
Just click Save when you're finish to export the capture.
For other Windows tips and tricks and other how to's, be sure to check out cnet.com/howto.
