Screen Shots

Sounds like Hollywood to you? Actually, screen shots are a useful talent of your Mac. On the keyboard hold down Command + shift + 4 all at the same time. Your cursor turns into a target-like object. Touch the upper left of what you want to copy and bring your cursor across to the right side as far as you want to copy and then keep going down over that page or that picture. Takes a little practice. Your screen shot then comes up on your desktop with a name “Screen shot 2011-04…..” and then the time of day. How technical is that!  (Double click to enlarge these illustrations.)

For illustrations on my PMUG handouts I do screen shots of charts, illustrations, etc. from the Internet or from any other location on the computer.

When you double click on that screen shot icon on your desktop it will open up with Preview. Here you choose File > Save As. Now take your choice of format. Some of these I have not used, so you’re on your own!

For posting to the PMUG blog or my own blog I want to use JPEG, so that’s my choice. Notice that the little screen shows you the file size and you can choose levels of quality. If you choose PDF you can even choose a Quartz Filter type and also click to encrypt and require a password.

On the main Apple Menu look under Help, type “screen shot” in Search. Here you’ll find more info on how to take a picture of the whole window, and other helpful topics.

Go to Applications > Utilities and choose Grab. Open and see the choices on the menu. Preferences lets you choose Pointer Type and Enable sound. Under System Preferences you can select Keyboard Shortcuts  > Services > Pictures, then capture full screen, use timer, and capture selection from screen. Grab is another name for Screen Shot.

To see information about a screen shot you’ve taken, such as the size and depth, when you have Grab open choose Edit > Inspector.

Under Mac Help see the information on Shortcuts for taking pictures of the screen. You can take a picture of a window or the menu bar, or take a picture of the menu without its title.

Some applications, such as DVD Player, may not let you take pictures of the screen.

You can take a screen shot from a YouTube showing. In this example, I’ve shrunken it by moving the dots (little handles) inward.

In Pages go to Inspector > Metrics and you can click to Constrain proportions. You can shrink something equally, or can adjust it to what you need. When I make a booklet using ClickBook from BlueSquirrel.com I have to undo the Constrain and widen the picture out to compensate for the automatic sizing that program does to print full size pages into booklet size pages.

If it’s Mac it can be fun and easy. That’s why we’re always learning new things and in PMUG we’re happy to share what we’ve learned so far. We want to hear from you -- what puzzles you, so far? What new things have you learned to do?

This is the handout at the PMUG meeting this morning.  If you weren't there be sure to come next time so we can enjoy conversation and learning and fun!

And the latest just in from Art Gorski, "After you do Cmd-Shft-4, and before you select anything, press the space bar. As you move the mouse around the screen, entire windows and menus will highlight. Click and it will do the selection for you."

Now, an additional pointer from David Passell: "If you press CTRL along with the CMD - SHIFT- 4 the selected item will be placed on the clipboard where you can add it to any document you are writing, including email."