If you’ve recently received your HP laptop and want to take a screenshot but don’t know-how, this article will walk you through the simplest steps to capture the entire screen in a variety of formats. We don’t use any third-party software to click a snap; all you have to do is follow the keyboard keys.
Screenshot, screengrab, or a screen capture are the words that you might be quite familiar with.
They aren’t anything new or extraordinary and almost every device today, whether it’s a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone, has a built-in feature for taking a screenshot.
Basically, a screenshot or taking a screenshot refers to the practice of saving the existing or currently displayed data or content on the screen of any device as an image form.
In this article, we discuss this tool with a more specific emphasis on the different ways of how to take screenshots on an HP laptop.
How to take a screenshot on an HP laptop?
Over time, the screenshot tool due to its importance has evolved from merely capturing the entire screen to grabbing only the specific areas of it.
The general and traditional method of taking screenshots
When it comes to taking a perfect screenshot, usually every device has a built-in method of taking it.
For instance, it can be a combination of some keys on your smartphone or on the keyboard of your laptop or an option hidden in the dropdown menu, etc.
Usually, the screenshot feature is located at a place that can be quickly and easily accessed without causing any interruptions or changes in the current contents of the screen intended to be captured.
Originally and still as a general practice, the built-in screenshot tool will capture all of the screen.
However, it is also not necessary that the entire contents of the display would be needed in the screenshot due to lack of importance or confidentiality reasons, etc.
Different ways to take screenshots on your HP laptop
Today, device manufacturers have introduced added features to the screenshot tool such as the ability to capture any specific portion of the screen while leaving out the rest.
Here we closely look at some of the ways in which you can take screenshots on your HP laptop.
Using the default set of keys for screenshot on HP Laptop
The steps to do this are –
- Simply press the ‘Prt Sc’ (Print Screen) button on the keyboard to save a temporary screenshot of the current screen.
- Then go to the Microsoft Paint app or any image editing app and use the ‘Paste function’ (Ctrl+V) to paste the screenshot onto a blank canvas.
- Next, save the image in the desired format from the ‘File’ option in the menu and it’s done.
- You can either save it as it is or edit/blur some portion of the screenshot before saving it.
- Another way of doing it directly is to press the ‘Windows’ and the ‘Prt Sc’ key together and the image will directly save into the ‘Screenshots’ subfolder of the ‘Pictures’ main folder.
Capturing portion of the screen on HP Laptop
Again, this option is also built-in in your laptop. To use it, do the following –
- Press the ‘Windows’, ‘Shift’ and ‘S-letter’ key at the same time to activate the Snip & Sketch tool.
- A toolbar will appear on the top center of the screen.
- Use this toolbar to select the portion you want to capture. Upon selecting, the snippet tool will disappear.
- Now simply, follow the instruction above in the first step of opening an image editing app and saving the screenshot.
Also Read: Top 7 Best Free Screen Recording Platforms
Doing more with the Snip & Sketch tool
Aside from the above-mentioned way to screenshot your display, the Snip & Sketch tool also offers three added features. These are –
Freeform snip
This tool lets you capture a portion of your screen in any shape you want. Just feel free to drag the mouse over the piece you want to capture and it will do it.
Window snip
Select the tool and then click on the active window to take a screenshot of it only while skipping anything in the background.
Fullscreen snip
Capture the entire display with a single click.
Why take a screenshot?
Taking a screenshot becomes necessary for several different reasons such as because –
- Taking a screenshot is actually super quick and easy, and therefore it is a preferred alternate method to noting any important piece of information. This means that even if the data being displayed on the screen is not static and in motion, you can still capture a static image of some important information within a split of a second and before it is replaced with something else.
- You get to capture the exact thing on the screen as it is.
- Screenshots can be used for referencing a piece of information in any case.
- Screenshots are a great and quick way to share your screen content with someone else such as your colleagues and coworkers.
- During a long-distance video call with friends and family, screenshots can serve as an addition to your memorable moments.
