I use different screen capture utilities depending on the type of screen I'm trying to grab. Some are great for a quick and dirty capture of a page I want to send someone. Others are good for annotating an interface I want to post to a web page. And still others are best for archival screen capture or for interfaces with video. Below are the 6 screenshot utilities that Mac users should know about. Don't skip over the first one, because there's a tip in there you might not be aware of.
- Apple Screen Capture (Mac)
The built in screen capture tools provided by the Mac allow you to capture full screen (Command-Shift-3) or portions of screens (Command-Shift-4). The PNG images are then placed on your desktop named as Picture-1, etc. Adding Control (Control-Command-Shift-4 or 3) places the screenshot in your clipboard so you can paste right into Photoshop. - Skitch (Mac, free)
Skitch is an excellent screen capture tool from Plasque, the makers of Comic Life. The tool provided a twitchy interface for quickly capturing screens, annotating, and uploading to a photo site like Flickr, to it's image portal, or to your FTP directory. This tool is easy to use, and I would argue provides greater flexibility and control than Apple's built in tools in terms of file naming, screen selection, and editing. The only downside of this tool is that it doesn't capture complete windows requiring a scroll below the fold. - Jing (Windows and Mac, free)
Jing is a screen capture utility from Techsmith, the makers of PC screen capture tool SnagIt, and video capture tool Camtasia. The tool copies the simple flow that makes Skitch so succesful, but adds video capture (exported as Flash/SWF) to the mix. As with Skitch, Jing doesn't capture complete scrolling windows. - Screengrab for Firefox (Windows and Mac, free)
If you use Firefox, Screengrab is a handy extension that makes it easy to save or copy (to clipboard) a complete web page, a selection, or only visible portions of the browser window. A small icon is installed in the status bar of your browser, so whenever you see a page you want to grab, you can select your save/copy options, and the directory where you want the PNG to go. - SnapWeb (Mac, Commercial)
SnapWeb is a tool I've used for several years to grab complete pages including content below the fold. This is essentially a slimmed down browser that give you a lot of control over how you're saving files—you choose from multiple formats, browser dimensions, and file naming preferences. It takes a few more steps to use this tool, but it's proven the most effective at grabbing trickier Flash sites. - Tasty Apps' Web Snapper (Mac, Commercial)
Web Snapper is a nice tool you can use with Safari that allows you to queue up screens you want to capture, and either save off one at a time, or using the Web Snapper window. The application allows you to capture pages in their currently viewed state so you can snap DHTML layers or Flash elements. One very nice feature is that you can save off all those screenshots into a multi-paged PDF. Love it. To trigger the capture so you can capture interactive elements on hover, you can invoke the keyboard shortcut Command-Shift-E.
And finally, a supporting cast member...
- Backdrop (Mac, free)
Jing and Skitch will take screencaptures of individual windows (on Skitch, use CMD-Shift-5 and click the window) and put them on a white background. But if you want to capture several windows, you probably want a clean background. Backdrop is an application that simply fills the background with solid white.
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04/30/08 @ 20:38
For those in the windows world, Window Clipping is light years ahead of anything else.
05/01/08 @ 01:32
a handy addition to the apple screen capture: use command-shift-4 and then hit the space bar to capture only the window you need (with rounded, transparent corners in png-format).
05/01/08 @ 10:31
That's a nice one, Mesiu. Didn't know about the spacebar trick.
05/01/08 @ 11:03
swissmiss added paparazzi, which is free for the Mac. This is an excellent tool that I had tried out an earlier version of before the Delay option was added.
I didn't use it at the time, because it was impossible for me to grab screens on Flash sites that showed loading messages. The Delay option allows you to at least have the tool wait before capturing the screen.
Naming options for this tool are very nice as well. It allows you to specify variables for naming, e.g. url, title, host, date, etc. The application asks you to enter a URL, then provides a full screenshot, scrolling below the window fold.
This tool is similar to Snapweb in that both capture scrolling windows. The main reason I chose SnapWeb over Paparazzi was because Snapweb is basically a pared down browser, so it lets me click in the screen to navigate to multiple pages in a site and snap as I go.
05/03/08 @ 15:35
what about snapz pro x?
05/04/08 @ 01:49
Somewhat more esoteric but surprisingly useful is GrabFS, which presents a virtual disk containing current screenshots for every open application on your mac. When I'm doing an evaluation of a program I'll keep the app's GrabFS window open and drag screenshots out of it as needed. I don't have to invoke an app, use a key command, repeatedly select a window or region, etc. And since the GrabFS documents are image files, you can drag them directly into your layout app of choice.
05/04/08 @ 10:55
I used to use Snapz Pro X, but gave it up when I found a utility that was able to capture complete windows requiring scrolling.
GrabF5 looks interesting--a different take. Will have to try it out.
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