Comments on: More about screen capturing in OS X

By: M

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:27:43 +0000

In os9 you use to be able to print the window and it printed EVERYTHING in the entire window not just what showed up on the screen. Taking a screen shot was also available with the cmd-shift-3. I really miss the old print window. With it I could print out a list that may be several pages of the contents of a CD or DVD or just a project I was working on. With the os9 print window one could toggle open the folders and the files within that folder would print also (indented under the folder). You could sort the window first by any of the sorting methods (name, date, size, label) Now THAT was a cool print window.

By: JonasW

JonasW — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:24:02 +0000

“Eerr ANYBODY who ever worked with pictures knows a bmp is far better than png… that’s common sense, get the highest quality possible gives you much more choice and control over want you want to make out of it”

I guess you’ve never worked with pictures then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG

By: Ilya Birman

Ilya Birman — Fri, 18 May 2007 08:02:59 +0000

Complaining about how bad Cmd-Shift-4 is, is dumb since it soooo easy to change in OS X. Just go to System Prefs, Mouse and Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, find screen capturing comands, and assign them to Print Screen and Alt Print Screen.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:32:13 +0000

I can certainly respect that this feature is handy on a Mac, and being able to save an arbitrary screen region to png is great!

But are you really taking the position that “Cmd-Shift-4″ is a less obtuse command than the “Print Screen” key followed by Paste? Or am I just reading into this too much?

And while MS Paint isn’t a good image editor, it works fine for cropping and saving (if I intend to mark up a screenshot, Photoshop is probably already open), plus it’s lightweight so it can opened without the wait.

Something about this article, perhaps the paragraphs spent ripping on the “Print Screen” key’s name (it used to actually print long ago; it’s the same reason we use “print” commands in programming to put text on the screen), just comes across reading like, “Oh, it’s so simple! Just hold down the Command Key and Shift, then press the ’4′ key! OF COURSE that’s the most obvious screen grab combination!”

(As usual, both interfaces have their shortcomings, and in both cases trade-offs were made in the design…)

By: billyG

billyG — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:13:55 +0000

is this function available on my nokia mobile fone?

By: mike

mike — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 16:40:24 +0000

great!! i didnt know how to grab screens on mac till i googled it and came across this, thanks!!! Beats the windows printscreen hehe

By: Nishin

Nishin — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 01:36:00 +0000

Eerr ANYBODY who ever worked with pictures knows a bmp is far better than png… that’s common sense, get the highest quality possible gives you much more choice and control over want you want to make out of it… if your HD can’t handle a 5mb file… well time to upgrade, this is 2006 ;)
Not mentioning it doesn’t have to be 5mb, just save it in whatever format you want (avoid Paint’s crappy jpg… nobody used to work with pictures ever uses paint anyway).

A computer illiterate friend of mine was looking for a way to grab screen pics on his Mac and not being familiar with Mac myself I found this page on google and I was just wondering.. this is a Mac site right? Dealing with Mac stuff ok? … why do you keep mentioning/comparing with microsoft??

Anyhow, pressing 4 buttons seems too comlicated for my (lazy) friend but at least I learnt something in the process, thanks for the tip.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 21:07:34 +0000

Someone wrote this is the article review -

“- Cmd-Shift-4 and then SPACE to capture window? Do you have to hurl a dead goat over your left shoulder as well? In windows you just press ALT+”Print Screen” to capture the active window…”

No actually, this is very simple. It takes 3 seconds *maximum* for me to get the crosshair pointer up and then to press space to capture a window. And then it simply puts the file on the desktop. Handy. No Pasting into an image editor…

Photoshop takes ages to load, good luck with having to wait for it every time you want to take a screenshot. In fact, I’d say waiting for Photoshop to load will take 30 seconds minimum. Now, compare this amount of time to how long it takes to press 4 keys on a Mac. Yes, you know I am right.

By: Ravuya

Ravuya — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:25:41 +0000

You can also use TinkerTool to change which image format Command-Shift-4 saves in; it used to save in PDF until I changed it to JPEG.

By: rahrens

rahrens — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:53:55 +0000

Hey, don’t forget about the app Grab; it’s in the Applications folder, and gives you this same functionality as well. Plus, you can grab parts of the screen and have the option of directly saving the resulting image as a pdf, tiff, etc. as well.