How do I edit a screenshot in Windows 10?

After many years of using Snagit (see below), this has become my primary screenshot method. Hit the Shift-Windows Key-S keyboard combo, and you have a choice of shooting the full screen, a rectangular selection, a freehand selection, or an individual program window. An alternative way to invoke Snip & Sketch is via the Action Center's Screen snip button.

After hitting this keyboard shortcut, you momentarily see a small thumbnail panel notification at lower right that says Snip Saved to Clipboard. Tap this to open the Snip & Sketch window. In this, you can mark up the image with a pen, pencil, highlighter, eraser, ruler, and cropping tool. Then you can save the image to a folder of your choice, or share it using the standard Windows Share menu. That lets you send the image to Instagram, Messenger, Mail, or any other app that accepts the file type. It also lets you send it to a nearby PC with Nearby Sharing enabled.

A couple things I wish Snip & Sketch had are text overlay and basic shapes, including the ever-useful arrow. If you only want to use this tool, you can go into Windows Settings app and choose Ease of Access > Keyboard and choose Use the PrtSc Button to Open Screen Snipping. Note that this requires restarting Windows.

This is the longtime classic method of screenshotting in Windows 10. Its especially useful for shooting apps that change appearance when you hit a keyboard combination. Often a menu will collapse as soon as you tap a shift key. Hitting the Print Screen or PrtSc key copies the entire screen to the Clipboard; adding Alt together with Print Screen copies the active window rectangle only.

You do need to take extra steps to open and save your image in an app that deals with images, such as Paint, Paint 3D, or even Photoshop (unless you take advantage of the next tip). Simply paste with Ctrl-V when youre in a new document in one of those apps, and then you can go to town with editing, and finally, save the image to the folder of your choice.

This is one of the best things ever to hit screenshots in Windows, having arrived in 2015. As with the plain old Print Screen key, you can save the entire screen or the active window with Print Screen or Alt-Print Screen, respectively. But after you go to OneDrives Settings panel and choose Automatically Save Screenshots / Capture to OneDrive from the Backup tab, youre saved from having to open an imaging app, pasting from the clipboard, and then saving the file. Hit Print Screen, and youve got an image file saved, all in one step.

Windows Action Center (the slide-out panel on the right side of the screen) notifies you that your shot was saved, and you can click on the notification to take you right to the folder where its saved. If you use this method a lot, youll probably want more cloud storage than just the free 5GB. An Office 365 account (starting at $6.99 per month) gets you 1TB, as well as all the famous productivity applications.

This method was introduced with Windows 8 but it still works in Windows 10. Its simpler than most of the other methods in this story, and on tablets like the Surface Pro, you invoke this functionality by pressing Volume Down and Power button at the same time. This or Windows Key-Print Screen key combo will momentarily darken the screen to show you it worked, and instantly save a PNG image file to your Pictures > Screenshots folder.

Alt-Windows Key-Print Screen saves just the active window, but, interestingly, this uses the Windows Game Bar (see next slide) functionality, saving your screenshot to your Videos/Captures folder. Both of these methods are good if you want instant saving without having to bother with the Clipboard or OneDrive cloud storage.

Windows Key-G opens the Game bar, which includes an icon looking like a camera in its Broadcast & capture section. Tap that, and your screenshot is saved (somewhat counterintuitively) to the Videos/Captures folder under your main user folder.

Snipping Tool remains in Windows 10, though its been superseded by Snip & Sketch. If youre clinging to Windows 7, you wont have the option to use Snip & Sketch (detailed above), so Snipping Tool is for you. To use this, you'll need to actually run the utility; typing "snipping" in the Windows search box at lower left and tapping Snipping Tool gets you started.

Like Snip & Sketch, Snipping Tool lets you capture free-from or rectangular selections or the full window or full screen. You can time-delay a screenshot, as well, from one to five seconds. It also lets you mark up your image with a pen or highlighter. Snip & Sketch (as noted above) does all that and adds cropping, a ruler, and a pencil.

Another way to take screenshots is by using a third-party tool. Our favorite screenshot app at PCMag is Snagit. Snagit has at least one major benefit over Windows built-in screenshot tools: You can snap away and all your shots remain in the utilitys repository, available at any time you might need them later. Its the least disruptive way to shoot screens while continuing your work. After youre ready to deal with the shots, you can browse the history and save the images you want to the folder of your choice.

Snagit also includes advanced tools like video and scrolling window screenshot tools. It offers handy image-editing and drawing tools, including brightness, arrows, text overlay, and borders. The downside? A Snagit license will set you back $49.95, but for those who need its advanced functionality, its worth the money.

If youre on a digital-inking-capable touch-screen PC like a Surface Pro, you can take a screenshot of your full screen simply by double clicking on the back button on a Surface Pen. This opens Snip and Sketch with the full screenshot ready for annotating, editing, and sharing.

You'll want to snap screenshots on your smartphone and other devices besides your Windows PC. Our walk-through of How to Take a Screenshot on Any Device covers the process used by all of your non-PC gadgets with screens.