Ted the Penguin

PrintScreen on a Mac

Ever wanted to set a custom icon for something? Or want to take a picture of an icon (or any specific part of your screen)? Well if you’re on a Mac, it’s easy to do.

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.

• 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.

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 as Derek points out via the link below. 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 (Tiger): 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.

Via Erik J. Barzeski and Derek Punsalan