Blog's from the Bush

I guess I've been using Mac's since they were birthed but I am still mystified by the number of Mac users that don't know how to take a screen shot. Screen shots are a lot more useful than most people think - I often find my self with a "This doesn't work, the screen looks weird/strange/wrong" statement being thrown at me - from which I'm supposed to decypher the real problem a user is having. As you can imagine the first instinct is to just turn off completely but I've found that getting someone to send me a screenshot can usually help resolve problems very quickly.

The functionality has been built into the Macintosh since Lisa days and the only changes to it have been increased functionality and updated file formats to reflect the change in colour depth (monochrome to 32 bit).

The basic screenshot commands have worked since day zot. Here is a quick list of the current OS X ones:

• Shift-Apple-3 (--3) - this creates an image file of All Display space, ie. your entire Desktop not just your main monitor or a specific window. Please note is you have several large displays attached (say 2 x 30" Cinema displays) this can create quite a large file.
• Shift-Apple-4 (--4) - this provides a Cross-Hair cursor, clicking and dragging and area of the screen produces an image file of just that area.
• Shift-Apple-4 (--4) then Space bar - if you press the Space bar after the Cross-Hair appears the Cursor will change to a Camera cursor, using this you can click inside any window and an image file of that whole window will be generated.
• A thing to note is that the window doesn't have to be in the fore-ground, in-fact it can be almost completely covered and the capture will still work - as long as there's enough room for the cursor.

You can Cancel the screenshot by pressing the Esc(ape) key at any time during your Shift-Apple-4 journey.

As you can see from this screen capture any section of the screen can be captured using the standard Shift-Apple-4 command, notice the Safari download window?

With the Window capture variation mentioned above, even that Safari Downloads window can be captured in its entirety even though its 90% hidden. When you press the space bar the cursor changes to this Camera cursor.

As you move the cursor over windows the currently selected window highlights, as show in this capture... clicking your mouse button during this process results in an image of just the highlighted window.

Even if the Window is in the backbround... the whole window will be used to create the image file.

Well, now none of you have any excuse for saying "I can't take screenshots on my Mac"

A small postscript here - there are also lots of good shareware & commercial screen capture & recording applications for Mac's - especially if you're doing things like writing manuals, help files or tutorials. Speaking of which there are a lot of good guides/tips about Screen Capture on the Mac.

Enjoy.