Screen Shot On Mac

Taking a screen shot with your Mac is an easy and almost instantaneous way to save images from your computer. Screen shots are a powerful tool for showing how to perform step by step tasks on a computer or online program. On a Mac you can take these without opening any special program. Anything you see on the screen can be made into a screen shot by following these simple steps:

1. To capture a screen shot of the whole screen, press Command-Shift-3. This will save the whole screen as a PNG file to your desktop. If you don't want to save the image, pressing Command-Control-Shift-3 will copy the image to your clipboard, which you can then paste into another program.
2. To capture a screen shot a portion of the screen, press Command-Shift-4. A crosshairs will appear. Place it at one corner of the area you want to capture and click and drag to cover the portion you want. When you release the mouse the image will automatically save as a PNG file on the desktop. As with the first method, if you press Command-Control-Shift-4 the image will be copied to the clipboard instead of saved to the desktop.
3. To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4 and then press the Spacebar. This will cause the cursor to change to a camera; move it to the application window that you'd like to capture and it will become highlighted. Click the mouse and the whole application window will be saved as a PNG file to (you guessed it) the desktop.

Another tip to keep in mind when working with screen shots: the files will be saved with the name "Screen Shot" followed by the date and time that you took them. These files can start to look the same after a while, so it's a good idea to rename them quickly to keep from forgetting which is which.