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I wish to point out the differences between a camera and screenshotting - but I don't really know enough about the technical side about the latter to do so competently.

How does screenshotting work? Does it "freeze" pixels? Is it the graphics card or its driver that does the work? Some other hardware or software component?

Where in photography, the light is being captured by a sensor, the computer instead emmits light through the screen - but I'm thinking that the screenshot itself happens way before the data has been turned into pixels?

jonrsharpe
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Erica
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    It's the graphics card and OS-specific image representation technologies such as Direct3D on Windows. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/ansel-revolutionizing-game-screenshots/ – user1390208 Dec 30 '19 at 16:02

1 Answers1

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In most cases a screenshot is just a copy of a frame buffer, or portion thereof, that contains an image generated by your program. Whether the frame buffer is in the graphic card memory or RAM depends on the OS, graphic card and its driver.

mustaccio
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