Wolf’s Little Store

Well, since a few of my co-workers use OSX as their primary OS now, I figured I’d share some beginner knowledge. Today’s lesson is about taking screenshots on a Mac.

Full screen screenshot

Command + Shift +3 takes a screenshot of your full screen and puts a PNG with picture-1.png as the filename on your desktop. If you have multiple screens hooked up this will take a screenshot of all of your screens and put the files on your desktop.

Custom area screenshot

Command + Shift + 4 changes your cursor into a crosshair showing the current coordinates of your mouse cursor. Drag a box to release your mouse to take a screenshot of the area you ’selected’.

Application window screenshot

Not a lot of people know this one, probably because it’s use is situational (e.g. for presentations) but this is pretty awesome. Hit Command + Shift + 4 and then hit spacebar. Your cursor changes into a photo camera. Choose the application window you want to take a screenshot of, click, and it will be saved to your desktop (as always).

The reason all of these files are PNG’s: they preserve the transparency and shadows of the application window. For example, to the right is a screenshot of the Quick look window in Leopard, featuring the Silverback gorilla.

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