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61: Screen Captures

A screen capture is a quick, easy way to take a picture of what is on your computer screen. There are two types of screen captures: full screen and partial screen.

To take a full screen capture, press the apple, shift, and number 3 keys at the same time. You will hear a sound effect of a camera taking a picture. This will place a .png version of the picture on your desktop.

If you would like to only take a picture of a section of the computer screen, you will need to take a partial screen capture. Hold down the apple, shift and number 4 keys at the same time. Your cursor will become a cross hair. Using the mouse or touch pad, click and drag the cross hairs to select the portion of the screen for a capture. The portion that will be captured is now highlighted in blue. To take the picture, simply release the mouse click. After you hear the camera shutter sound effect, a .png of the picture will appear on the desktop.

If several windows are open on the desktop and you would like to take a screen capture of just one of them, press apple, shift, and the number 4 keys at the same time. Your cursor will become a cross hair. Press the space bar, and the cross hair will become a camera. As you move the camera, the window the camera is over will become highlighted in blue. When the needed window is selected, press the mouse button to take a picture. Again, as the picture is taken, you will hear the camera shutter sound effect and a .png version of the picture will appear on the desktop.

If you would prefer your screen captures to default to jpeg format, complete the following few steps:

1) Open your applications folder inside the harddrive.



2) Open the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder.
3) Open the Terminal application.
4) Type the following command exactly:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

5) Now, hit the RETURN key.



6) Leaving the Terminal application open, restart your computer.
7) Your screen captures should now default to jpeg format.

This article was last edited on Jun-12-2006 7:01 pm
This article can be referenced by its article number: 61 or by any of the following keywords: photo screen capture.