Screenshots
Mac OS X doesn’t have a convenient “Print Screen” button, but it has some key commands that allow a lot more customization in your screen shots. By default, screen shots are saved in a file on your Desktop, though you can change that. See Important Notes below.
- Full screen capture (Command+Shift+3) - This acts pretty much like PrintScreen in Windows.
- Select region (Command+Shift+4) - Gives you a pointer and allows you to draw a box from which it will capture the contents; great for quickly taking application screen shots.
- Select item (Command+Shift+4 then Spacebar) - Allows you to select specific items, windows, menus, icons, desktop backgrounds, etc. And the items are transparent too.
- Lock aspect rations (Command+Shift+4 then Shift) - to lock your region horizontally or vertically.
- Resize proportionally (Command+Shift+4 then Option) - to resize your region proportionally
Important Notes:
- All the shots are taken in .png format in 10.4, great for viewing or printing, not so hot for putting on the web. You can change the output format with Onyx. Different versions of Mac OS X have different formats for screenshots.
- Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar): jpg
- Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther): pdf
- Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 (Tiger/Leopard): png
- If you hold down Control in addition to the above commands, it’ll copy the image to your clipboard instead of saving it directly as a file.
- If you hate multiple key combinations, you can make it simpler, or even just one key, by going to System Preferences - Keyboard & Mouse - Keyboard Shortcuts.
- You can also use the Grab app, available in every Mac application via the Services menu.
Useful Links:
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