How to Take a Photo on a Chromebook

By

Jack Wallen

Updated on July 6, 2022

Reviewed by

Jessica Kormos

What to Know

Launch the Camera app and tap the Shutter or the Video icon. Select thumbnail to view your gallery.
To save a photo directly to Google Drive, expand the Google Drive entry and select My Drive.
To print, open the photo in the camera gallery and tap the Print icon.

This article explains how to take a photo on every Chromebook model.

How to Take a Photo With a Chromebook

For this article, we're going to assume you have a Chromebook with a camera, it's associated with your Google Drive account, and it's connected to a printer.

To take a photo, launch the Camera app, frame your shot, and tap the Shutter icon. If you need to set a timer first, select the Timer icon. You can choose a 3- or 10-second delay.

You can open the Camera app via the launcher icon in the bottom left corner. You can also use the search feature within the Launcher app.

To make a video, select the Video icon next to the Shutter icon. Then, use the Start recording button to start and stop the recording.

Whether you're taking a photo or a video, it's very important to have plenty of lighting for your shot. If you don't have enough lighting, the images will be grainy. The perfect lighting is natural lighting (think outdoors).

What to Do After You Take a Photo

Once you record your images, you can see them all by selecting the thumbnail of your most recent photo or video in the bottom right corner. From here, you can:

Print your photo (the icon shaped like a printer).
Save your photo (the icon shaped like a downward-pointing arrow in a box).
Delete your photo (the icon shaped like a trash can).
Return to the camera app (the icon shaped like a left-pointing arrow).

Sometimes it's easier to take a screenshot on your Chromebook than to take a picture. If you do, the screenshot is stored in the same place your pictures are.

Saving a Picture on Your Chromebook

This is where it might get a bit confusing for some. Remember, the Chromebook is the ideal cloud platform. And because your Chromebook is associated with your Google account, you would immediately assume that photos are saved to your cloud account. That’s not the default case. When you save a picture you’ve taken with the Chromebook camera, it actually saves to the local Downloads folder. But, you can dictate where the picture is saved during the save process.

To save a photo directly to Google Drive:

Expand the Google Drive entry.
Select My Drive.
Navigate to the folder you want to save the picture into.
Select the Open button.

Printing a Picture on Your Chromebook

Printing pictures on a Chromebook is easy. As mentioned previously, your Chromebook needs to be connected to a cloud-friendly printer. Once that's taken care of, open the photo you want to print in the Camera Gallery and the Print icon.

In the next window, select the Change button. You're given a list of available printers. Select your printer, then select Print.

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