Images are usually better than words. A footprint is a great tool that makes your life a lot more comfortable as a machine user. With this today’s technology, one can take a picture of the entire display, you can “cut” part of an image to correspond to repetition, and you can explain a computer problem by sharing a pop-up shot, and much more!

Each keyboard looks a bit different. Typically, the inkless baby footprint kit and the Screen buttons read “Print” or a brief description such as “PrtScn.”

Let’s say something happens on your screen, and an error window pops up, for example. You can press the “Print Screen” button, and your computer will save a copy of your screen to your computer’s memory. You won’t see anything at this point, because it happens in your computer’s background memory. Since it was the last item saved in memory, you can go to a document window (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) or an e-mail window, right-click and choose “Paste,” and the image will appear. (The easiest way to paste is to use the keyboard by holding down “Ctrl,” followed by “V.”)

“Screen Print” picks up everything on your desktop screen, even small icons at the bottom! That’s great, but you don’t need all of these things in the background in most cases … maybe you just need to pick up one window or a pop-up. Pressing the “Alt” key, followed by the “Print Screen” key, will capture the current, active, or most directive window (click the window you want to take a picture to bring to the front first, then hit “Alt-PrtScn”).

Finally, if you just need to take part in an image, Windows 7 has a great tool called the Snipping Tool. Opening this tool/program will allow you to draw a window with your cursor around the area you want to capture in an image. It allows the user to copy the logo from the web page only, rather than taking a picture of the entire browser window. This tool is excellent when you are unable to copy and paste an image.

Capturing a desktop snapshot can be useful in documenting an operation, and capturing the current state of data in a program (possibly an error message to a technician to help with troubleshooting.

The location of the Print Screen button on the keyboard varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. The usual position of the key in the upper right corner of the keyboard, near the scroll lock key, and the clipping key.

Most people think that when you press this button, a screenshot of the screen will come out of the printer. However, this does not occur since the image is copied only to the Clipboard. You must open the document where you want to place the image and save it in this document format. In Windows, clicking the Print Screen button once takes a picture of the entire screen, while pressing Alt and Print Screen together captures a specific section of the screen.

When taking or copying photos, please remember to respect copyright. Never use an existing image unless you have written permission from the owner.