You have something that you want to show to someone else, per a print screen, but you have no idea exactly how to do this. Do not worry, the riddle will be solved – just follow a few simple steps and you should be able to get your image to another person or to your printer in no time.

If you are using a Windows system, just follow these steps.

Step 1: Find the image you want to print and have it ready on the monitor.

Step 2: Locate and press the button on your keyboard called "Print Screen". It may be abbreviated "Prt Scrn" and will usually be located above the arrow keys, and above the "Insert" key on your keyboard.

Step 3: Now open up your copy of MS Paint. All computers that have Windows will have this installed standard. If you're having trouble finding it, the quickest way to find it is to hit "Search" and then type in "Paint". You will see an icon appear that will say "Paint" or the program itself will open. If the icon appears, double-click on the paint icon and the program will open up.

Step 4: Now all you have to do is either hit CTRL + V on your computer or pull down the menu that says "Edit" with your mouse and select the word "Paste" from your menu. Congratulations, you've just printed your entire screen.

Step 5: What you have printed is your entire screen. You can crop the picture to just save what you want to show people by selecting the dashed square in the upper left hand corner of the Paint tool, then adjust the rectangle so that it creates a border around where you want to crop, and hit " Cut "from your Edit menu.

It will look like it disappeared impressively, but it's not gone forever. You just moved it to your clipboard. Open a new document and hit "Paste" and what you had cut just a few seconds ago will appear like magic.

Step 6: If you want to save it on your computer, under the file menu is the word "Save", and that will allow you to save your picture. You also may print this by selecting the "Print" option from the File Menu.

But what if you own a Mac? You can look from now until Kingdom Come and never find the "Print Screen" button. Again, just follow a few simple steps and you'll be on your way in no time.

Step 1: Locate what you want to find, then press the Apple key, Shift and the 3 key at the same time. If you have sound on your card, you will hear a sound like a camera being snapped. You will also see the words "Picture 1" on an icon somewhere on your desktop.

Step 2: If you just want a partial screen shot, then hit the Apple Key + SHIFT + 4. A cropping tool will appear where your cursor is located. Double-click the icon and then drag the cursor. Whatever is inside this box will be "Printed". Once you have what you want to print, just release the mouse, and you will hear the "snapshot" sound that I described in Step 1.

Step 3: You can also use the Applications Print Screen. If you are here and hit the Apple Key + SHIFT + 4, the same cropping tool should appear. If you hit the space bar, it will turn into a camera. You can move the camera around using your mouse. As the camera goes over an application, it will turn blue. Click on the application you want (that is, when it's blue) and the "snapshot" sound will again be heard.

Step 4: If you want to print your screen, just hit the Apple Key + P, for print, and it will print off your work.

Tip for saving: If you get a chance to choose your file format, the most economical as far as drive space is ".jpg" or ".jpeg", this will save it as a much clearer image and sharper color than a.gif , which is better for animated files, and a.bmp which is higher quality, but takes up much more disk space. To select the file format on a Windows computer, select the "Save" Menu. Below the name, it will tell you what the current file format is. It should default to a JPEG file. If it does not, pull the arrow on the right hand side and select.jpg format and then save it as this.

On Mac OS 10.4, the default is.png, but you can save it as a.jpg every time by selecting it or changing it in Terminal if you type in the following code:

"defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
Killall SystemUIServer "

Doing this should save all your pictures on a MAC as.jpg files.