Screenshot tips, tricks and hacks for the Mac
If you have a Mac of any kind running Leopard, you are familiar with the program Grab. This is a handy tool for grabbing screenshots, true, but it has a few issues that I find troublesome. There are other ways to get screen shots on your Mac that many don’t even know about, and ways to make Grab more efficient for your needs.
The first issue i have with Grab is that it auto saves every file to a TIFF format. This is hugely annoying because most people don’t use these screen shots for any purpose where a TIFF format would be acceptable. I use most of my screenshots in WordPress entries like this one, and WordPress and TIFF files definitely do not get along.
If you are a brave soul you can fix this on the command line via Terminal. I can’t stress enough that if you are not comfortable with Unix commands and using Terminal this is not the solution for you, and you should skip this idea. If you do know Unix, you can enter the following into Terminal as a command (simply change the file format to whatever file you’d prefer: pdf, jpeg, gif, png): defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf
For those of you who don’t want to muck about in Unix and risk your computer’s health, there are other options. Unfortunately most of the other options involve commands outside of Grab or downloading and using other programs, like Skitch. Not an ideal solution.
Some shortcut keys you can use to grab screenshots faster and more efficiently without having to open Grab or another program are:
+SHIFT+3 Captures a screen shot of the entire screen you are currently on, then saves it as a file to your preferred save location, usually your desktop.
+SHIFT+4 Changes your cursor to what looks like a giant plus sign. This is called a cross hair cursor, and you can use it to select a portion of the screen to save to the preferred save location.
If you do a series of shortcut keys you can get different results. For example, press +SHIFT+4, then press the SPACE bar, then click on a window. This will grab the contents of that window to save to your preferred save location.
Holding down the CONTROL key in addition to the short cut keys tosses the captured image into your clipboard, not onto your desktop or other save location. There is also a full set of more detailed commands for other screenshot functions here if you are not faint of heart.
What if you don’t want to remember commands or mess with Unix? The popular solution right now is Skitch. I tried it for a while and like it, but in the end it is not the most efficient way of handling screen shots for me, especially now that the combination of Grab and Preview offers me a way to edit on the fly.
You can also download and use a widget, like Screenshot Plus. some people really love widgets. I have a few I love, like the Mint stats plug in Junior Mint, VelaClock and WordCounter widget, but I don’t use very many: I find the switching back and forth to be more hassle than help.
Another program that I find too simplistic for my personal needs, but that might work for you, is Paparazzi. It is fast, easy to use, and offers a variety of file formats and sizes. It doesn’t offer any more on the fly photo editing options than Grab does, however.
If you need animated screen shots for a presentation, there are a variety of options. One is ScreenMimic. the drawback to Screen Mimic is that it isn’t free. Also, you can capture animated screen shots on the Mac if you know how to use the software it comes with. I’ll cover that in another how-to for you down the road.
In the end the solution to the screenshot issue in Mac involves more workarounds than most people like doing. I found a solution that works for me, but what works for you might be different. If I missed an option or your favorite software solution, please put them in the comments for us.
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July 5th, 2008
Paparazzi is not really a general screenshot application. It’s made for one specific thing and that is to take a screenshot of a webpage in safari. it takes the shot of the entire webpage even if it is further down (scrolling down). For instance this webpage, you could take a capture of it and the jpg would show the entire page including all the way down to the comments in just one long picture.
So of course it’s too simplistic cause it’s only made for a specific type of screenshot.