The modern world is a digital world. We recognize people online. Friendships make and break online. Even love, with all its spirituality and materiality, has accepted the digital form.
Thus even the most fundamental aspect of collecting memories, capturing the little things in life, has moved into a more digital foreground.
We use the camera for capturing the moments that are outside of our devices. But the world inside of them, which is expanding at an exponential rate after the advent of CoronaVirus, to capture moments from this world inside of our devices, we use screenshots.
In this modern-day and age, taking screenshots has become quintessential for numerous purposes.
So, today we will look at the different ways on how to take screenshots on Windows 10.
By using the PrtScn key.
One of the easiest ways of taking a screenshot on windows 10 is by using the PrtScn key. PrtScn is short for “Print Screen”. Just like the name suggests, the PrtScn key captures the contents of the screen. We may find this key on the top row of the keyboard along with the function keys.
In the case of Laptops, you might have to accompany the PrtScn with the Function key. That is, you have to hold both, the function key and the PrtScn key together, to take a screenshot.
Normally the PrtScn copies the entire screen to our clipboard and then it can be pasted anywhere, but by the use of some modifier keys along with the PrtScn, this function can be altered.
Let’s take a look at some of these variations of the PrtScn key pressed along with other modifier keys.
a. Windows key + PrtScn key: When we press these two keys together windows automatically saves the entire screen as an image file. This file is stored in the “Screenshots” subfolder inside the folder named “Pictures”.
b. Windows key + Shift + S: When we press these three keys together the screen becomes dim and the mouse pointer changes into a different shape. We can now drag to select the part of the screen that we want to take a screenshot of. Then the screenshot is copied which can now be pasted in a different program.
( It has to be mentioned that this function works only on the Creators Update on Windows 10)
c. Alt + PrtScn key: When we press these keys together the active window is copied to the clipboard and can be pasted elsewhere.
By using the Snipping tool.
The snipping tool is a much more flexible screenshot-taking tool that Microsoft provides us with on Windows 10. It takes the screenshot and saves it as an image file without pasting it on any other program.
This is how we can use it :
a. From the starting menu, select the snipping tool.
b. There we have the “mode” dropdown. Select the shape of the screenshot from there. It can be anything from, rectangular, full screen to a free-form shape.
c. Then click “New” and the screen freezes. You can now use the mouse to create the screenshot. The screenshot will appear in the Snipping Tool window.
d. If you intend to include anything like a tooltip, which appears after a mouse movement, you can specify how long to wait before taking the screenshot using the Delay menu.
e. You can also annotate the screenshot after you have captured it, using the drawing tools.
f. After you have finished editing the screenshot, you can now save it using the “Save As” option under “ File”.
g. You can also copy the image to your clipboard by using the copy button in the Snipping Tool window.
By using the Gaming Bar.
The Gaming Bar is an overlay that, as the name suggests, we can use for taking screenshots on windows 10. It can be used on most Windows games.
This is how we can use it.
a. Start a game from the Xbox Console Companion program or the Start menu.
b. While you are playing the game press the Windows key + G. The Game Bar overlay appears.
c. Now, you can either click the camera icon to take the screenshot or you can also use the keyboard shortcut, that is, Windows key + Alt + PrtScn.
d. The Screenshot automatically gets saved to the “Captures” subfolder inside the “Videos” folder.
e. If the game is being played on Steam, pressing the F11 key would also take a screenshot of the page and save it in the Screenshots folder on Steam.
There are also other tools and applications that can be used to take screenshots on Windows 10.
By using the Greenshot Application.
Aside from the built-in tools of Windows, Greenshot is one of the most famous free applications to take screenshots on Windows 10. The fact that it is free, open-source, and also very accessible and user-oriented with its customizable keyboard shortcuts and other features, makes it a very useful application after the, very capable, Windows tools.
Greenshot runs in your system tray where it provides useful options like “Capture Window From List,” which lets you instantly capture a screenshot of any running window from a context menu.
By using the Snaglt tool.
Although Windows provides us with very useful tools to take screenshots and Greenshot is also a very handy application, all of these applications and tools have their limitations. For someone who wants to capture a lot of screenshots and not spend a lot of time doing it, they might require something a lot more powerful than the ones mentioned above. That is where Snaglt comes in.
If you don’t mind spending a few bucks on a screenshot application, Snaglt by Techsmith becomes just the thing for you. It is an incredibly powerful screenshot application that can be used on Windows 10.
It makes taking screenshots really easy and has features that can target specific windows and capture the whole text in the scrolling windows like web pages and other blogs that you might be reading.
Snaglt can be used for screen recording too. It can convert the recorded videos into GIFs, add the videos and audio from your webcam and earphones and can also trim these videos and edit out the unwanted parts.
Snaglt can also extract the text from the screenshots and annotate them. It can replace the text in the screenshots with other texts and can pretty much do anything which you might expect from a screenshot-taking application.
Techsmith also provides a free trial before buying Snaglt so you can check out all of its features before buying it and find out if it meets your requirements
If you take a lot of screenshots this would be a very good application for you, there is absolutely no doubt about that.
Thus we have seen how we have various ways, by which we can take screenshots on Windows 10. You can opt for whichever suits you.
For basic screenshots, you can use the keyboard shortcuts. For editing and selecting the area of the screenshot, you can use the snippet tool. While playing games you can capture or record using the Gaming bar. If you wish to use an open-source application you can use Greenshot. Or finally, if you want to go full throttle into screenshots and screen recording and are thinking of buying an application, Snaglt, will be your best option.
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