Conversion Screenshot

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: How to have two windows open at the same time?.

jacobs

Quicken Alyssa said:

You can take a screenshot on your Mac by holding down command+shift+4.

If you use this screenshot command, your cursor becomes a small crosshair, and you need to drag it over the exact area you want in the screenshot. That is, position the crosshair in the upper left, and click-and-drag to the bottom right; as you drag, the area to be captured with be shown in gray. Note that as soon as you release the mouse, the screenshot will be taken; there is no opportunity to reposition the rectangle you dragger without starting over.

Some other tips and tricks:

If you start and realize it's going to be wrong, press escape before you release the mouse to cancel the creation of the screenshot.

Of, if you just need to move the area to be captured after the click-and-drag, before you release the mouse, press the spacebar and continuing to drag will move the gray rectangle your created around the screen so you can better position it; the picture is taken as soon as you release the mouse. 

If you want to get a screenshot of a specific window or menu, such as an error message or a dialog box, instead of doing click-and-drag over the window you want, do Command+shift+4 and press the spacebar. Your Mac will highlight the window the cursor is pointing to, and will display a small camera icon; this indicates it's ready to take a picture of the highlighted window. If the highlighted window is what you want, click your mouse button for it to take the screenshot.

There are even more options and tricks in the links I posted above. The CNet one is particularly helpful.

After creating the screenshot, it will appear on your Desktop. You can double-click it to open in Preview, and you can then use the tools in Preview to draw a line or rectangle over any data you want to obscure for privacy.

For this site, you can then just drag your screenshot into the text (Leave a Comment) area as you are typing your post.