[Tomisimo]

A screen shot is a picture of a window you have open on your computer or your entire desktop. Alternate names are screen grab and screenie.

You can quickly and easily take a a screen shot in less than 30 seconds without installing any special software to do so.

Take a Screen Shot on Windows

1. Press the Prt Sc button. Sometimes it's hard to find, but it should be there somewhere on your keyboard, probably near the right side. On some computers or keyboards, you may have to press Fn + Prt Sc or Shift + Prt Sc. If you use the Alt + Prt Sc key combination, it should take a picture of the currently active window instead of the whole screen.

2. Open up Paint, the image editor built into Windows. This is usually in the All Programs menu under Accessories, or you can go to Start => Run and type mspaint.

3. Once Paint is open, paste your screenshot into it by choosing Edit => Paste from the menu. You can use the Ctrl + V shortcut to paste the image as well.

4. Once you have the image in Paint, you can crop it if necessary using the tools in Paint and then save it. The best format to save in is probably PNG (at least if you're planning to upload it here to Tomisimo). JPG is a good alternative.

Take a Screen Shot on a Mac

Use the key combination ⌘ + Shift + 3 to take a picture of the entire screen and save it to the desktop.