Getting Started: Keyboard Shortcuts

There are a number of ways to take a screen capture, or screenshot, with your Mac computer. 
The most common method is keyboard shortcuts:

• Command+Shift+3:

  Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop

• Command+Shift+4, then select an area:

  Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop

• Command+Shift+4, then space, then click a window:

  Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop

• Command+Control+Shift+3:

  Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard

• Command+Control+Shift+4, then select an area:

  Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard

• Command+Control+Shift+4, then space, then click a window:

  Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

Additional Options

In Leopard, the following keys can be held down while selecting an area
(via Command-Shift+4 or Command+Control+Shift+4):

SPACE: 
Lock the size of the selected area and move it as the mouse moves

SHIFT: 
Resize only one edge of the selected region

OPTION: 
Resize the selected region with its center as the anchor point

Using OS X Applications: GRAB and PREVIEW

You may want to keep in mind that in addition to using the keyboard shortcuts above, screenshots and screen captures can also be taken by using the GRAB and PREVIEW applications that are included with Mac OS X. 

GRAB
Grab is located at /Applications/Utilities/Grab.  If you take a lot of screen captures, you may want to drag this app to your dock for easy access.

PREVIEW
In Mac OS X 10.4 and up, the PREVIEW application can also be used to take screenshots, by using the Grab submenu in the File menu:  While PREVIEW is open, click:  File > Grab

Tags: How To, tutorials

Posted on: Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 2:30 pm Category: How To Follow comments on this post through the RSS Feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.