In Mac OS X, how can I take a picture of the screen?

In Mac OS X, to take a picture of the entire screen (including any menus you may have selected), press Cmd-Shift-3 . You will hear a camera shutter click, and then an image of your current screen will be saved to your desktop in PDF format. It will be named Picture N, where N is a number (e.g., Picture 1, Picture 2, etc.).

To take a picture of only a portion of the screen:

1. Press Cmd-Shift-4 . Your mouse pointer will change into crosshairs. If you want to cancel at any point in this process, press Esc.
   
   
2. Move your mouse to the upper left corner of the area you want to capture. Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to the lower right corner of the area you want to capture.
   
   
3. Release the mouse button. This will save the area as an image.

You can also take pictures of individual windows, menus, and icons:

1. If you want to take a picture of a menu, select it. If you want to take a picture of a window, click it to bring it into focus.
   
   
2. Press Cmd-Shift-4 , and then press the Spacebar. Your mouse pointer will change into a camera. If you want to cancel at any point in this process, press Esc.
   
   
3. Click the window, menu, or icon you want to capture.

Note: Whether taking a picture of the screen, a portion of the screen, a menu, an icon, or a window, if you also hold the Ctrl key down along with other keys, it will save the image to the Clipboard rather than a file.

Grab

You can use Grab, which is normally installed in /Applications/Utilities , to take pictures of all or parts of your screen. It has a timed function that lets you include a pull-down menu or change which application will be active in the picture. You may also change the appearance of the mouse pointer or remove it from the picture altogether. Grab saves your pictures as TIFF files, which you can display in Preview or modify in a graphics editor, such as Adobe Photoshop.

Snapz Pro

For more advanced screen capture features, including video capture, see Snapz Pro X, available as shareware from Ambrosia Software.