cmd shift 4 - screen capture question

[Andy Hughes]

Cmd-Shift-3 seems to capture af full screen in Preview, and Cmd-Shift-4 gives you a cursor to select an area and then into a Preview file. I would like for the area selected to go into the "copy" buffer automatically, rather than having to open the Preview file and then doing "copy", and then pasting into what I want. Basically, I want to do Cmd-Shift-4, select an area, go to another application and paste. I couldn't find any preferences or setting for this in the system, Preview, or Grab. I'm not sure if Preview is actually doing the capture, but I can't figure anything else out. I have a LOT of this to do, so any hints about where I can change the settings or an easy way to go from capturing the selected area and putting the captured image into another application would appreciated.

Andy Hughes

[Gwailo]

As far as I know, you can't. That key combination outputs the captured graphic directly to a file.

In /Users/{username}/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist the only key available is AppleScreenShotFormat (which I have set to JPEG), but there doesn't seem to be anything like AppneScreenShotDestination. Perhaps if you set AppleScreenShotFormat to COPY or CLIPBOARD or something that'll work; just a guess.

[simX]

Actually, the functionality is there. You just need to know the secret shortcut.

Press Command-Control-Shift-4, select an area, and voilà! The selected area screenshot is now in your clipboard! This also works for Command-Control-Shift-3.

By the way, you should hear a different kind of *clack* sound when you do this, instead of the normal snapshot sound.