The Tips - Mac Kung Fu - page 257

Tip 233
Take a Picture of the Screen
Your Mac has a powerful screen-grabbing facility built in, with a variety of
ways of accessing it.
Using Keystrokes
The simplest way to take a shot of the screen is to tap SHIFT + COMMAND + 3 . This
will output an image to the desktop, although beware if you're playing a DVD
movie—the DVD movie window will be blank because movies are copyrighted.
If you want to grab a specific area of the screen, hit SHIFT + COMMAND + 4 instead.
The cursor will change to a crosshair, and you can click and drag to define
an area that will be turned into a screenshot and output to the desktop. Hold
SPACE while dragging, without releasing the mouse button, and you can
reposition the screenshot frame. Hit ESC to cancel.
To capture one program window in particular, tap SPACE once after this series
of keystrokes, as in SHIFT + COMMAND + 4 , and then tap SPACE . Then click the win-
dow you want to capture. It doesn't matter if it's behind another window—it'll
still be captured in its unobscured entirety.
See also Tip 157, Supertip: Make Better Screenshots , on page 180 .
Screengrab to the Clipboard Rather Than to a File
To capture a screen to the clipboard instead of creating a file so you can then
paste the snapshot into your own document or image, hold down CONTROL in
addition to the standard capture shortcuts. For example, SHIFT + CONTROL +
COMMAND + 3 will capture the entire screen to the clipboard. SHIFT + CONTROL +
COMMAND + 4 will let you click and drag to capture a portion of the screen to
the clipboard.
Using the Grab App
If key combinations are a little confusing, you can use the Mac's Grab utility,
which is found in the UTILITIES folder of Applications within Finder. Once the
program starts, select the entry you want from the Capture menu. Grab also
gives you the opportunity to take a screen grab after only ten seconds have
passed—just select the Timed Screen option on the Capture menu.