I need to take a bunch of screenshots for my documentation so I looked for a Mac OS X utility to save the screenshots directly as GIF or JPEG files.
Grab and Cmd-Shift-4 are great for saving screenshots as PDF files, but then you have to open and export each shot.I tried FreeSnap, but though it had the functionality I wanted, the compression on the JPEGs was a little too rough for my tastes.
Change of strategy - instead of outputting directly to file, I decided I wanted a way to copy the screen area straight to the clipboard so I can paste it into Photoshop. A quick search returned this article with an explanation of how to use the command line ’screencapture’. This looks like it will do the trick.
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Clint Ecker adds this Comment:
Mac OS X supports capturing to the clipboard with a simple modifier to your Cmd-shift-4.
Simply do Cmd-option-shift-4 or Cmd-option-shift-3 respectively to capture directly to the clipboard instead of dumping it to a file on the desktop.
February 12th, 2004 at 1:01 am
Clint Ecker adds this Comment:
P.S. You might already know this but you can hit the space bar after hitting cmd-shift-4 or cmd-option-shift-4 to get the “camera” icon to highlight only a single window, dock, menu item, etc
February 12th, 2004 at 1:02 am
Alex adds this Comment:
Awesome, that (Cmd+Option+Shift+4) is even better.
February 12th, 2004 at 1:08 am
Miraz adds this Comment:
Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia is worth every cent it costs. It does a superb job with screenshots. Been using it and its predecessors for years now. Check it out.
Cheers,
Miraz
February 12th, 2004 at 2:09 am
Michael Heilemann adds this Comment:
OS X literally has more shortcut keys than you can shake a stick at!
Thanks for the hints guys.
February 15th, 2004 at 5:01 am
Michael Heilemann adds this Comment:
Anyone know why I can’t use this along with iDVD?
February 15th, 2004 at 10:27 am
Alex adds this Comment:
Copyright issues… there are apps on MacUpdate and VersionTracker that get around this.
February 15th, 2004 at 10:46 am
Frode Danielsen adds this Comment:
cmd-shift-opt-4/3 does not seem to work in OS X.3.3 for me. Seems to me it should be ctrl instead of option… so cmd-shift-ctrl-4/3
May 25th, 2004 at 1:22 pm