Capturing a Window in Mac OS X

By Oli
At 2:36 PM · Thursday, 11 September · 2003
To Apple

When taking screen captures, I generally want to capture a window not a dragged selection. In Mac OS 9, screen captures were generated by complex key combinations like Command Option Shift - 4, while the Caps Lock is down. I liked the look of Grab (Mac OS X’s included GUI screen capture utility), but the menu option “Capture Window” is always grayed out. I finally searched on Mac OS X Hints and found an article with the correct keyboard shortcut for window capture; its Command Shift - 4 then Space. Why not Command Option Shift - 4? A caveat is the window must be at the front - if any other windows overlap they will be included in the capture, cropped to the edge of the selected window. This also works on menus if they are open.

It works, I’m happy.

For your edification:

  • Command Shift - 3 is Capture Screen
  • Command Shift - 4 is Capture Selection (drag the crosshairs)
  • Command Shift - 4 then Space is Capture Window (selected window is indicated with a yellow border or a blue overlay)
  • Hold down Control when using any of these and the image will be saved to the Clipboard rather than a file on the desktop
  • Escape to cancel (when using Capture Selection or Capture Window)
  • The files produced are PDF files; open the file in Preview and choose File > to save as a different format

Discussion...

Comments (2) · TrackBacks (1)  to  http://www.boblet.net/cgi-bin/mttb-external.cgi/13
1. Trackback from Pale Blue Dot  · 24 Dec, 2003 · 2:57 AM

Boblet: Capturing a Window in Mac OS X (Apple). I had to do screen captures today for a project and found this article useful in figuring out how to do window grabs natively in OS X….

Read more in Capturing a window in Mac OS X »
2. Comment by Nathanael  · 9 Jan, 2004 · 11:17 PM

The screencapture works fine but i dont want it to be a PDF capture but rather JPG or TIFF for that matter, anything but PDF.

3. Comment by oli  · 11 Jan, 2004 · 10:49 AM

Hi Nathanael,

Thanks for your comment. It’s true that Screen Capture can only save images as PDF files. If you’d like to have something other than a PDF, taking a screen capture becomes a two-step process involving the Preview application:

  • Take the screen capture as described above
  • Find the PDF file generated (it’ll be Home > Desktop > Picture 1.pdf, choose the highest number if there’s more than one Picture file)
  • Drag that file onto Preview in the dock
  • Use File > Export and select the format you’d like (JPEG, TIFF, etc)

If you’re going to take a lot of images or if you like to use the best, check out Snapz Pro. It does everything and anything related to capturing your screen (as a picture or movie).