Have you ever asked how you can get a screen shot from your desktop? Can you imagine, you want to send a screen shot from your desktop´s background to your friend or you received an error message from your Windows operation system and you want to send that particular message as a picture to your friend to find out, what that error message actually means. There are several ways for doing that. Some of them are very easy but then they will cost lots of money. In this article I want to show you how you can make screen shots from your desktop.

Look at the keyboard of any standard computer. On the upper right side of any standard manufactured keyboard you can find the button “Print Screen”. Have you ever asked yourself what this button actually does? The answer to this question is very easy. Get a digital print of your screen. But how can you do that?

There are few applications on the market, which would do that job for you. But you have to spend money for using them. How about a simple way which does not cost any cent for you? I want to show you from the most expensive way to cheapest one, which costs just nothing except spending few minutes to read my article to the end.

First and the most expensive solution:

1-Purchase and install Adobe Photoshop for almost $1,000

2-Fire up your Adobe Photoshop

3-Click on the button Print Screen on your keyboard

4-Go back to Adobe Photoshop and press the combination keys Ctrl+N (Two keys Ctrl and N)

5-Press the Enter button

6-Then press the combination keys Ctrl+V (Two keys Ctrl and V)

7-In Adobe Photoshop Menu Bar click on Files and then Save As……

8-In Format Radio Button select JPEG (*.jpg;*.jpeg;*.jpe) and then save it on your hard drive where you can find it again.

9-After that you have saved your screen as a picture, which you can use for sending in your emails or printing it with your printer.

But look at all those steps and the investment. You need at least $100 USD and then you have to do 8 steps to get a print screen from your desktop. Adobe Photoshop is a powerful application for designers but it will be too expensive for just making a print screen. That means this solution is a wrong one for doing that.

Second and almost the half price than Adobe Photoshop:

Every single computer user has installed Microsoft Office on his/her pc. It cost around $300 to $500 USD if you want to purchase the professional version of Microsoft Office. It will be exact the same scenario but you just do it with Microsoft Office Word. You open a new Word document and copy and paste your screen shot just like you did it with Adobe Photoshop. First click on Print Screen button, open a new Word document, and press Ctrl+V to paste your screen shot into Microsoft Word document. After all you can save this document on your hard drive and do whatever you want to. You can sent it per email or just print it with your printer. Unfortunately Microsoft Office Word does not support Save As…. a JPG, GIF, or TIFF format. That means we can save it just as it is as a word document.

Third and the free solution for sending your screen shots per email

Microsoft delivers Outlook Express with every single Windows Operation system. In Windows Vista, they call it Windows Mail, but it is exactly the same product with a new name. As you know you can use Outlook Express as your application for all kind of emails accounts such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail from Google, Hotmail, Windows Live, and etc. at the same time. That means you can setup in Outlook Express Setting all your email accounts, which will allow you to receive, read, write and send your email without having to open internet explorer. You can find the exact step by step documentation, how you can setup your email accounts in Outlook Express.

Anyway if someone has never done it before, I am here and I can answer your questions. But let go back to our main theme.

Press the Print Screen button and then open your Outlook Express. In the Menu Bar of Outlook Express, click on Files, New, and then Mail Message. Click in the area where you write your texts and messages and then Press CTRL+V to paste the screen shot into your email. You can immediately see that you have inserted a print screen of your desktop. After that you can sent it to your friends and family. The only point is you cannot save it as a photo-files such as JPG, GIF and etc.

I am sure you ask how you can get a Print Screen of an active window. It is easy too. You just press the buttons Alt+Print Screen at the same time and after you paste it into your open Outlook Express Email Message, you can see that you just inserted only the active window, which you wanted.

The last, for free solution, which helps you to save your Print Screens as a photo-file

Microsoft delivers for free an Application called Paint with every single Windows Operation System. Just start Paint program with going through Star/All Programs/Accessories/Paint or just click on Start/type Paint in the search Area and press enter button (Only for Windows Vista). Then you can paste your print screen like before with pressing Ctrl+V buttons on your keyboard. But you have to press Print Screen Button or Alt+Print Screen to make a copy of your screen or your active window, before you paste it into Paint application. After that you are able to save it as a photo-file such as JPG, GIF, TIFF, and etc.

I hope I could show you how you can make a print screen from your desktop or your active windows and save it as a photo or send it immediately per email, without using any special software. I will be happy if you send me comments and question, if something is not clear enough in my article. I can learn from my readers too.