Screencapture is great, and Apple’s built in system allows you to capture the screen in a multitude of different ways (it’s surprising how often you need to screen capture). Anyway, most of these features aren’t new to Leopard but they are significantly improved (especially the new cute and useful cursors primarily context dependent cursor to offer cues to remind you what you were doing)… There are three four ways of capturing screenshots — keyboard shortcuts, Grab, commandline and Preview; they all have unique features, and unique drawbacks… four methods where one good one would do :) (Snapz Pro X is probably that application!)… also at the bottom of the post I’ve got a spotlight trick that allows you to find all the screenshots you’ve taken… I found a million I’d forgotten about!

Keyboard shortcuts for screen capture

Probably, the best all round method.
Whole Screen: Command + shift + 3
Selection: Command + shift + 4 (a selection tool appears now with useful numbers which tell you where you are starting the selection (screen X, Y) and then the size of the selection when you start clicking (X, Y))
Window: Command + shift + 4 then space (also captures menus and the dock, TIP: open the menu then press the command keys)
NB: press the ctrl key as well as the above combinations to send the snap to the clipboard and not a file. (thanks John).

Cmd Shift 4 Space is supremely useful - you can take pictures of the dock, of menus, of icons and all sorts of other things my little brain can’t think of.

Cmd Shift 4 Space can also take screen shots that are bigger than your screen, for example.. if you wanted to, say, take a screenshot of a google map but you wanted a really large area then make your browser window larger wider (thanks Mark) than the screen (tip move the top left off screen — anybody know a way of making a window longer than the screen? I’ve tried an Applescript but it doesn’t work for heights though i can make super wide windows) then make a window screen shot in the normal way.


Window Capture: Command + shift + 4 then space

Dock Capture: Open the dock then, Command + shift + 4 then space, then select the dock

Icon Capture: weirdly only works on the desktop, Command + shift + 4 then space, then select icon

Grab

Grab (in your Application->Utilities Folder) seems to be crippled compared to the command key equivilants. It doesn’t seem to allow you take window captures of things like the Dock (for shame!). However, it does have some good features for selection the cursor you want for the shot (strangely, Apple doesn’t let you have the Beachball cursor as the cursor — not what they want in a screenshot).

Preview

I didn’t know about this one! Thanks to David C (see comments). Just fire up Grab and select the File Menu -> Grab and either Selection, Window and Timed Screen

screencapture from the command line

This is a very useful tool and allows you to do a lot of things, New in Leopard are the ability to select the format of the output file, do a timed capture, switch of the shadow of a window capture (useful in some circumstances) and send the file directly to the clipboard or to a new Mail message. For more information type ‘man screencapture’ into terminal.


usage: screencapture [-icMPmwsWxSCUt] [files]
-c force screen capture to go to the clipboard
-C capture the cursor as well as the screen. only in non-interactive modes
-d display errors to the user graphically
-i capture screen interactively, by selection or window
control key - causes screen shot to go to clipboard
space key - toggle between mouse selection and
window selection modes
escape key - cancels interactive screen shot
-m only capture the main monitor, undefined if -i is set
-M screen capture output will go to a new Mail message
-o in window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window
-P screen capture output will open in Preview
-s only allow mouse selection mode
-S in window capture mode, capture the screen not the window
-t
image format to create, default is png (other options include pdf, jpg, tiff and other formats)
-T Take the picture after a delay of , default is 5
-w only allow window selection mode
-W start interaction in window selection mode
-x do not play sounds
files where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen


Spotlight to Find All you Screenshots

So the new Spotlight in Leopard finally has some features we’ve needed for ever (AND, OR etc). Anyway, all the screen shots have the metadata tag kMDItemScreenCaptureType which has three values (as far as i can find) display, window or selection. So to find all screenshots type the below into the spotlight bar (or Finder find bar):

kMDItemScreenCaptureType:display OR kMDItemScreenCaptureType:selection OR kMDItemScreenCaptureType:window


I’m sure there is more to let me know in the comments what you’ve found