Hey folks,  
 
I know this is a bit of a stupid question, especially for a guy who's been PC gaming for over 20 years, but I was wondering if anyone could walk me through the basics of taking PC screenshots and saving them to my computer for possible uploading to Giant Bomb?  I've got a huge back catalogue of PC games, and I feel like I could contribute quite a bit, but I just don't get the basics.  If anyone has any tips, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Never done it before in my life. I heard you use fraps or something though.

Best thing to do is download FRAPS. Simply run it on your desktop before you start your game and it can be used in game to take and save screenshots with one configurable button.

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Use fraps.

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Fraps is what I use. The trial version is kinda sucky (I recall watermarks and limited recording times) so you might want to obtain the full version.

I use Fraps myself as well. Just set a button and it'll save your screenie, ready to upload to GB.

some games have utilities built in, like tf2, which will take a screenshot and save it to a folder everytime you press F5.

For the very basic of barebones, there's the print screen key.  It only saves one picture at a time, but it saves it to your clipboard.  So open up Paint, ctrl + v the sucka, and you're there. 
 
Oh yea, and Fraps.

As Matthew said, the print screen, but I sometimes find it fails to capture anything.
Fraps is solid though, but you should also check in games controls a lot often saying "Screen shot" or some such.

" Fraps is what I use. The trial version is kinda sucky (I recall watermarks and limited recording times) so you might want to obtain the full version. "

Hey, thanks, folks!  
 
Two more dumb questions and I should be done for the day.  Hour.  Minute.  Well, okay, I'm usually plum full of dumbassery.  Here's the two questions. 
 
1) Can someone run me through the basics of using FRAPS?  I've downloaded and installed it, it's running in the background when I run a Steam game, but the hotkey i've assigned for screenshots isn't saving photos to the designated folder.  Am I just missing a key combination like Control + or Alt +? 
 
2) Are there any size restrictions to images posted on Giant Bomb?

are you sure you are pressing the right key? go into fraps , go to the screenshot tab and see how it is set up .
 
and if giantbomb had any restrictions on images,  you would find those guidlines at the image upload section of the site.

I've found that with some games it won't register the key press. I can't tell if it's because of the key or some incompatibility. You can always try pressing print screen and pasting in Photoshop. :p

You should really use Fraps because in some of the newer games and Windows 7, I've been having this problem where I just get a black screen, never really had any sort of problems with Fraps.