Quick Tip: Grab Screenshots With Preview
Need screenshots for your blog or documentation? Use Preview!
Let’s say you need some screenshots of a window. Open Preview, then select File > Grab > Window. Then simply click on the desired window. Preview will snag the screenshot and place it in a new Preview window, ready to be resized or cropped and then saved in the proper format.
Preview will also do Selections and Timed Screenshots, again opening each in a nice window. Preview also does the nice little screen coordinate/selection size trick mentioned in a previous tip.
If you prefer the venerable Command+Shift+Control+3 or Command+Shift+Control+4 to copy the screen or selection to the clipboard, Preview can still help you out. Just snag the shot, then go into Preview and do a Command-N. Preview will make a nice new window just the right size and even drop your shot into it for you.
You can also use the venerable Grab utility, but then you won’t have access to the resizing and cropping tools built into Preview but not Grab.
All in all, Preview is starting to grow up into a very, very useful little program. We’ll be talking more about it in the future.
You can also take a screenshot of a window as follows:
1) hit Command-Shift-4
2) hit your space bar (your cursor will turn into a camera)
3) move the camera cursor over the window you want to capture (the selected window will be highlighted)
4) click your mouse/trackpad button
Voila! A screenshot of your selected window is saved to your desktop.
You may now open the screenshot with your preferred photo editing software.