Screenshot
When it comes to problem solving, particularly with websites that don’t look like they ought to, proving what your screen looks like can be a problem.
The easiest way to show what your brand new website really looks like (on your computer, that is!) is to take a picture of your screen, also called a screenshot.
To do this under Mac OS X, use the following keystrokes:
- SHIFT-COMMAND-3 This will take a shot of your entire screen (or screens) and save it to a file on your desktop. If you have two monitors, you will get two files.
- SHIFT-COMMAND-4 This turns your cursor into a crosshair which you can use to drag between opposite corners of the area you want to capture.
- SHIFT-COMMAND-CTRL-3 Takes a shot of the entire screen and copies to the clipboard.
- SHIFT-COMMAND-CTRL-4 The crosshair method, which then copies to the clipboard.
- SHIFT-COMMAND-4, then SPACE. Turns your cursor into a camera. Click on the frame you want captured.
By default the image saved will be in a PNG format. To change that to a more useful format, like PDF, you will need Terminal. Don’t worry. Even though the Terminal is the favoured tool of many geeks, it’s quite safe to use by everybody else.
From the Finder, navigate to the Applications folder, then open the Utilities folder. Double click Terminal and type the following (or copy/paste):
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf
Logout or restart your Mac, and when you login again, all screenshots will be in a PDF format, which you can email more happily than a PNG.
I am using 10.5.6 and all my screenshots by default are PDF already. There is also a utility in your apps folder called GRAB which makes TIFF images.
Interesting … mine was still making PNGs. That’s good to know though.
I just checked out Grab, since I didn’t know it existed. What a great little program. It even takes times shots.
Thanks for the tip David!