Print Screen

U

untz

Registered
On WinXP, you can click on the "Print Screen" key on the keyboard and then paste it from the buffer, and you have a screen shot of whatever view you were looking at....

How do you do this on the Mac? Is there a key similar to the one on the PC?

All the best,

Unnsse
 
I'm not sure that it's my konfabulator widget doing this, but try [shift]+[apple]+[4]... you'll find a picture file on your desktop...
 
This works, but it saves them as PDFs on my Desktop. How can I paste them so they are in some type of graphics format (bitmap, GIF, JPEG)? What drawing program is installed by default on OS X?

Thanks,

Unnsse
 
If you use Grab.app (located in Utility folder), you'll have a .tiff image, and you can export it with preview.app in other formats... i think the same thing can be done with the .pdf screen captures...
 
Under 10.3 (Panther):
  • shift + cmd + 3 = Same as Print Screen on windows, full screen screen shot
  • shift + cmd + 4 = Gives you a + cursor...just drag a box around the area you want a shot of.
  • shift + cmd + 4 + space = Gives you a camera icon...just click in an open window for a screen shot of that window

Everything will be save to your desktop as a PDF. To convert it to another format, there's a few options.
  • Open in Preview, then export to the format you want. You could also use Photoshop or a similar program for this.
  • Setup a folder action that automatically converts the screen shot PDFs to a JPG, PNG, TIFF, etc.
  • Don't worry about it. Most programs on the Mac (newer) can import a PDF just like a JPG image. Word X can place them this way, same with InDesign.
 
If you do like mdkny says above, and holds down CTRL also, you get the picture in the clipboard, then in Preview choose "New from Clipboard" and you have the pic in a PICT format window, then choose "Export" to have the pic saved in your preferred format.

In GraphicConverter it's cmd-J to create a new pic from clipboard
 
Folder Action is what you want;

pdf2jpg.scpt

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
repeat with an_item in these_items
tell application "Finder"
set file_name to name of an_item
set file_ext to name extension of an_item
set desk_path to (this_folder as string)

set pdf_size to (size of file an_item as integer)
repeat until pdf_size > 0
delay 1
set pdf_size to (size of file an_item as integer)
end repeat

if file_name starts with "Picture" and file_ext is "PDF" then
set format_return to display dialog "Select output format." buttons {".pct", ".jpg"} default button ".jpg"
set output_format to button returned of format_return
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "."
set base_filename to the first text item of file_name
set img_path to desk_path & base_filename & output_format
tell me to convert(an_item, img_path, output_format)
end if
end tell
end repeat
end adding folder items to

on convert(img_file, img_path, output_format)
tell application "Image Events"
launch
set image_ref to open img_file
if output_format is ".jpg" then
save image_ref in img_path as JPEG with icon
delete img_file
else if output_format is ".pct" then
save image_ref in img_path as PICT with icon
delete img_file
end if
close image_ref
end tell
end convert
 
For this folder action...

Where do I put this file? Also, how do I run the file from the command line or have the file associated with the particular folder? I am newbie, sorry...

With thanks,
 
You would save it wherever you like, and then attach it as a folder icon to your desktop folder (located in your user directory).

And you can hit Cmd-Shift-4 and switch between + and the camera with space.
 
You can also download PDF2JPG

Put it here;

Library>Scripts>Folder Action Scripts

Then Configure Folder Actions, Control or Right click on the Desktop, enable Folder Actions. Then Configure Folder Actions. Put a Check in Desktop, click on it and PDF2JPG should be in the right pane of the window.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top