After pressing the print key, your screenshot will be located on your clipboard. This is temporary storage that Windows uses to set aside elements that you’ve copied or cut (e.g. text sections that you’ve cut out and pasted in Word). From the clipboard, you can add your screen capture into a program, for example, Paint. Open the minimalistic photo editing program and add the image from the clipboard. This can be done either using the menu list or with the key combination [Ctrl] + [V].
Now simply save the image and you’ll have then the screenshot as an image file that can be archived or transferred. You can also use a different graphics program like Gimp or Paint.NET. These usually give you a lot more possibilities for customizing your screenshot. Paint already has the basic functions, though, like cropping or inserting arrows, colored markings, and so on.
Other Windows applications can also work with the screenshot that you’ve got saved on the clipboard: If you need to place it into a document, it can be pasted directly into Word. This allows you to avoid taking the detour of saving a file that you may not need later anyway. In Microsoft Word, simply move the cursor to where you want the screenshot to appear and paste it from the clipboard. In similar word processing programs, the method is the same as in the other Office programs.
If you want to create a screenshot with Windows 8 or 10, there’s another available key combination: Press the [Win] + [Print] keys at the same time to create a screenshot that’s saved directly as a new file. Windows saves the file in PNG format and places it in an extra Screenshot folder. The files are numbered in ascending order.