There are times when being able to take a picture of what is on your screen could come in handy. For example, maybe you receive a very strange error message and need to describe the message to your tech guy. You could write down the entire message and send it on, but if you could just take a picture of your screen things would be much easier since a picture really is worth a thousand words in this case. You may also be watching a video and wish to take a still image of that video. While there are other ways to capture that image, it would be easiest if you could just take a picture of the area of the screen in which the video is playing. In the computer world these screen pictures are aptly called “screenshots.”
Traditionally, capturing screenshots can be a bit of work. Usually, at least for the windows world, you have to capture a screenshot by pushing the “print screen” button on the keyboard and then paste that screenshot into a picture editing program like Microsoft Paint or Adobe Photoshop. Then you have to crop and finally save the image. This can be a chore for people who struggle with using the computer and pretty annoying even for the computer “guru” types.
Thankfully, Apple makes this job much easier. There are a couple of ways to capture screenshots in Mac OSX. One way to do it is to use the program “grab.” If you do a spotlight search (search glass icon in the top right hand corner of the screen on OS 10.4 or greater) for grab it should come up quickly. If you can’t find it in spotlight or have an older version of OSX it is located in /Applications/Utilities. Once you have grab launched you can use the “capture” menu at the top of the screen to capture various types of screenshots ranging from just a selection of the screen to the entire screen. You can even take a timed screenshot which waits 10 seconds before snapping the shot. Give it a try!
Though using grab is nicer than the traditional windows method, it can be a bit slow and requires more work compared to other techniques built into Apple’s operating system. The fastest and easiest way to take a screenshot in OSX is to push the Command-Shift-3 keys simultaneously. This will take a screenshot of everything on your screen and instantly put it on your desktop.
But many times you only really want to capture a portion of the screen. This is also simply achieved by pushing the Command-Shift-4 keys simultaneously on your keyboard until the mouse cursor icon turns into crosshairs. Then, move your mouse pointer to a corner of the area on the screen you wish to take a picture of and then click and drag out a box containing the entire area. When you let go a screenshot will appear on your desktop already cropped and ready for sending over the internet. In the case of the strange error message, just drag that picture file into a new email and send it on to your tech guy.
In conclusion, screenshots can be extremely useful for a multitude of things ranging from tech support to capturing stills in videos. While capturing screenshots have been a bit tricky on other systems, Apple has designed some very simple and powerful methods that make screenshots fairly easy for even the most tepid user. If you use an Apple computer and have a hard time remembering how to do this, write down “Command-Shift-3.” The next time you run into trouble try hitting those keys and send the resulting picture to your tech guy.
For a more in-depth tutorial for capturing screenshots in Mac OSX check out the O’Reilly’s article here.
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