Services (GRAB) Always grayed out...

[neuby]

What is the point of the 'services' item in the application menu? I would like to do the occaisional screen grab, but but grab is ALWAYS grayed out. I have to launch it separately, then do it from within grab.

Why bother with a 'services' menu that does not ever allow one to access services?

[cducasse]

I had this same problem. I have grab run in the background on startup. I That menu will not be grayed out anymore. This solved my problem. Even on an 800Mhz iBook, it works fast...Let me know if it works for you!

Chris

[texanpenguin]

OK, here's the thing:

The Services menu only (natively) works in Cocoa applications, so anything that was ported from OS 9 or Windows is unlikely to use it.

Secondly, the "Grab" service is stupid. To use it, you have to be in a program which can accept the resulting image (not Finder, Safari, etc.) - like Photoshop, for instance (or probably iPhoto). Mail can too (if you open a new Mail message), as can TextEdit.

For most screenshots, either use the Grab utility in /Applications/Utilities or the handy-dandy keyboard shortcuts:

Cmd+Shift+3 - Takes the whole screen and saves it as a PDF (if you have multiple monitors, each is a different page of the document) on the desktop.
Cmd+Shift+4 - Cursor changes to a cross-hair so you can drag a selection, then saves the result as a PDF on the desktop.

With either, if you hold control, the image will be saved to the clipboard (like how Windows does it). It's also a good idea to get QuickImageCM - a Contextual Menu item that allows you to do a one-step conversion from the PDF to a normal image format (JPEG for instance).

[fryke]

I think I _once_ tried the Grab application in Rhapsody DR 2, then once in Mac OS X Public Beta and decided that I wouldn't ever use it. The Cmd-Shift-Nr shortcuts are flexible and good enough. If you need more, there's shareware, although too expensive, I think, to ever buy: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/11530