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
Command-Shift-3 . You will hear a camera
shutter click, and then an image of your current screen will be saved
to your desktop in PNG format. In Mac OS X 10.6, it will be
named with the date and time that you take the screen shot. In
Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier, 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:
- Press
Command-Shift-4. Your mouse pointer will change into crosshairs. If you want to cancel at any point in this process, pressEsc.
- Move your mouse to the upper left corner of the area you want to capture. Hold down the mouse button, drag the mouse to the lower right corner of the area you want to capture, and then release the mouse button.
You can also take pictures of individual windows, menus, and icons:
- 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.
- Press
Command-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, pressEsc.
- 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.
Last modified on November 24, 2009.
