Screenshots

In my engagement post last week I threw out screenshotting as one measure of engagement. It's not a form of interaction that people talk much about (linking, commenting, tagging, are more popular) but I find myself using the Grab utility so much these days. I saw that Grandma thing and just had to screenshot it.

As more and more interesting stuff happens on the web, people are going to want to capture it and talk about it. Just as we do with photography and video in the real world.

Apple has had Grab in its operating system for years. I used a windows machine for something like 25 years and never found anything like it in that operating system. Maybe they fixed that with Vista. Who knows because I don't use Windows anymore.

But there is one thing I wish Apple would fix about Grab. It needs to be able to save in a format other than TIFF. How about making JPG the default? That would make it easier to grab and blog the web, something that is going to be more important over time.

UPDATE: Loren pointed me to SnapNDrag. It works great. Thanks Loren.

Comments

[Loren Feldman]

This is what you want.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19919

[JP Checa]

Maybe Apple was waiting for the JPEG compression patent to expire (Oct 6, 06). I know a few years ago, Forgent started asking for royalties and licensing from everyone using JPEG compression tech.

(One of the many articles on Forgent)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/23/forgent_jpeg_suit/

(Patent #)
4,698,672

[andydigitale]

Fred, a utility like Cocktail for Mac can actually change that to any file format you want. (That's how I did it.)

I'm not sure but there are free utility programs like MacJanitor that might be capable of this too.

The whole things is nothing else than a few Unix commands with a pretty UI. Someone with a knowledge of Unix and familiar with the Terminal window ( not me!)will be able to do this in seconds.

Regards

Andreas

[Rex Hammock]

If I'm understanding your issue correctly, here are a couple of hack solutions. The free utility Image Well (http://www.xtralean.com/IWOverview.html) allows you to drag a screen grab into a window, edit and resize it, drag it out of the window, and you've got a jpg. -- in about five seconds.

Another solution -- high end -- is the product Snapz Pro X ( http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/ ) that is screen-grab on steroids. Especially cool are the features that allow you to product video screen grabs with voice-over, thus making it a "Screencasting" tool. It's around $60 I think. It's worth it if you plan to do a 'screencast' however. Good luck.

[engtech]

With Windows you press Ctrl-Print Screen and then paste it into any image editing program and save it (I use Infranview).

Not seemless, I know.

[stu]

Command-Shift-4 will allow you to take a screen grab of any selected area and saves as a PNG. Command-Shift-3 grabs your whole screen

[olivier]

Don't resort to third party tools, if you can just do this:

1) Open Terminal (applications => Utilities => Terminal)
2) Copy-paste this:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

(press return, of course, and close terminal)

Screengrab will now create jpg's by default (some macs require a reboot).

Same goes for:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type tif

[RLL]

I do a lot of screen caps. Check out SnagIt from Techsmith. Absolutely the best grab tool I've ever used. All kinds of creative options for using grabs as a mode of communication. Their Camtasia product does the same thing with onscreen animation and video.

[Ivan]

Wow, Oliver, thanks, that's perfect. I've always wanted jpegs as well. Brilliant!

[Brooks Jordan]

I use Snapz Pro X to capture jpeg screenshots on the Mac as well as videos.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

[Mark Thomson]

Check out a Dashboard widget called (appropriately) 'Capture'.

You can capture the whole screen, the dashboard, a selectable screen portion, or a specific window in almost any format.

[Andy]

Fred...check out the free trial of Snapz Pro X 2.0 mentioned above https://secure.ambrosiasw.com/spx.php?action=add&item=2650 Get the video version. Captures Images or VIDEO flawlessly. Can seriously capture a youtube video or DVD with no loss in quality...pirate's dream :)

Also, you can save the image/video in almost any format you want, and automatically resize it in the process. Great program I just bought.

[Adam Kalsey]

See this Macworld article about using the built-in capture utilities (like cmd-shift-4) and how to change the default formats they save the image in.

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2005/09/tigerscreenshots/index.php

[michael]

I second the snagit recommendation

[Richard Muscat]

hi fred,

check out this macosx widget http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/business/screenshotplus.html

its much more cooler than grab ... i found out about it after going through a similar though process as yours ;-)

-rich

[Graeme Thickins]

Fred, I don't know what you and the other Mac people are doing, but when I do a screen grab in OS 10.4.8, I have a simple drop-down to select any format I want -- JPEG included! Dead simple. What the heck are you guys running?

[evbart]

Heres a great app you can use to take screenshots, and then mark them up for communicating specific ideas. Unfortunately its not free.

FlySketch
http://www.flyingmeat.com/flysketch/

[joshua schachter]

on windows, use Snippy:

http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/

it does freeform areas by default but holding down control lets you capture a rectangle.

[Beth]

Fred,

I'm a 25 year plus windows users who will switch to MAC next upgrade. But for now I'm using SnagIt in Windows from TechSmith.

Here's my comment to this post as a screenshot in flickr -- you can add other images to the screenshot as well as text
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/300110183/