How to Take a Screenshot on a Mac
Keyboard Shortcuts
Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard
Use Grab or Preview
Instead of using the keyboard shortcuts above, screenshots can be taken by using the Grab application included with OS X. It is located at /Applications/Utilities/Grab.
Preview can also be used to take screenshots, by using the “Take Screen Shot” submenu in the File menu.
Use Terminal
The screencapture command in the Terminal can also be used to capture screenshots, and is useful for scripts. Here is an example.
screencapture -iW ~/Desktop/screen.jpg
Default File Save Formats
Different versions of OS X have different formats for screenshots.
Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar): jpg
Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther): pdf
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and later: png
In Mac OS X 10.4 and later, the default screenshot format can be changed, by opening Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and typing in:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format killall SystemUIServer