Screen Capture Shortcut Keys in Mac OS X
While there are many applications that provide a wide range of fantastic screen capturing features OS X also has built in shortcut keys for making many different types of screen captures.
Capturing a Region
Command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor allowing any region of the screen to be drawn around.
The selected area is by default saved to the Desktop as a PNG file. On Snow Leopard the file name will be indicative of the date and time the screen capture was made.
Capturing a Window
Command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor, subsequently pressing the spacebar turns the mouse pointer into a camera icon which when passed over a window shades the window a pale blue colour.
Clicking the highlighted window saves an image of it to the Desktop as a PNG file. On Snow Leopard the file name will be indicative of the date and time the screen capture was made.
Copying a Region to the Clipboard
Control, command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor allowing any region of the screen to be drawn around.
The selected area is copied to the clipboard. The screen capture is not saved as a file.
Copying a Window to the Clipboard
Control & command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor, subsequently pressing the spacebar turns the mouse pointer into a camera icon which when passed over a window shades the window a pale blue colour.
Clicking the highlighted window copies it to the clipboard. The screen capture is not saved as a file.
Capturing the Entire Desktop
Command & shift & 3 saves an image of the entire Desktop, by default, to the Desktop as a PNG file. On Snow Leopard the file name will be indicative of the date and time the screen capture was made.
If there are multiple monitors attached to the Mac a separate file will be saved for each monitor.
Copying the Entire Desktop to the Clipboard
Control & command & shift & 3 copies an image of the entire Desktop to the clipboard.
Only the screen from the primary monitor will be copied to the clipboard even if there are multiple monitors attached to the Mac.
