Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Screen-Capture Keystrokes

If you’re reading a chapter about printing and graphics, you may someday be interested in creating screenshots—printable illustrations of the Mac screen.

Screenshots are a staple of articles, tutorials, and books about the Mac (including this one). Mac OS X has a secret built-in feature that lets you make them—and includes some very cool convenience features.

Here’s how to capture:

• The whole screen. Press Shift--3 to create a picture file on your desktop, in PDF (Acrobat) format, that depicts the entire screen image. A satisfying camera-shutter sound tells you that you were successful.

  

  Figure 13-11. Top: If you’re interested in capturing only part of the screen, press Shift--4 to turn your cursor into a tiny + symbol. Now drag diagonally across the screen to capture only a rectangular chunk of it, as illustrated here. When you drag and release the mouse, you hear the camera-click sound, and the Picture 1 file appears on your desktop as usual. Bottom: To capture just one dialog box, use the old Camera Cursor trick. That is, invoke Shift--4 and then tap the Space bar ...