How to Get a .JPG File of What is on Your Screen

The technique is really very simple. There is a key to the right of the F12 key on your keyboard that is labeled "Print Screen" or possibly "Prnt Scr." When you depress that key, a copy of your screen (your desktop) is sent to the Windows clipboard. You can then simply paste the image into whatever program you want that accepts image data. This includes Photoshop, of course, but also includes word processing programs, such as Word, and slide show programs, such as PowerPoint.

At Boston West Photographic Society we use the feature to show examples in Photoshop tutorials. What we typically do is copy Photoshop screens that show something we want to point out or make clear.

After copying the desktop, we switch to Photoshop and open a new canvas (File > New, OK) and paste the contents of the clipboard into the blank canvas (Edit > Paste). Then save the new image (File > Save, set the format to JPEG and choose an appropriate name and quality and then click OK). That's all there is to it.

There are a few more points of interest that we'd like to share with you.

Canvas Size: When creating a new canvas, you can probably get away with accepting the default size. The default size will be the dimensions and resolution of the last image you copied. However you can set the Resolution and the Width and Height to values better suited to your purposes. An alternative is to resize the image after you have pasted it into the default canvas.

Partial Screen shot: Many times you don't want to copy the whole desktop, especially if you're going to have to crop the image down for your final result. What might be better is to depress the Alt key along with the Print Screen key. This will copy just the window that is active, sometimes called the window that has the "focus".

Not everybody needs to take screen shots, but now you know how we add examples to the BWPS tutorials!