How to Capture a Mac Computer Screen Picture
Having the ability to capture an image from your computer's screen has multiple benefits, such as using the image in a presentation or handout, making it much easier to understand. Using a Macintosh computer running OSX, capturing all or part of your screen's image (called a "screen grab" or "screen capture") is fairly easy.
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Instructions
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Capture the entire screen image on your Mac by pressing the Command (Apple) key + Shift + 3. Continue to hold each key down as you press the next, so you're pressing all three keys at once. You'll hear the sound of a picture being taken, and see a new icon on your desktop called "Picture 1."
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2
Grab part of the screen's image by pressing Command + Shift + 4. Your cursor will be replaced with a cross-hair icon. Simply click and hold the mouse button, and drag the icon over the area you want to save. When you release the mouse button, you'll hear the sound of a picture being taken. You'll see a new desktop icon as mentioned in Step 1.
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3
Capture a more precise screen shot by pressing Command + Shift + 4, and when the cursor turns into the cross-hair icon, press the space bar. It will then turn into a camera icon. Move it over the area you want to save and it will become highlighted, enabling you to see exactly what the screen capture is going to look like. Click your mouse within that highlighted window to save it.
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4
Re-name the screen captures that you've saved to your desktop to something more descriptive so that you'll be able to find them easily in the future.
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Tips & Warnings
Keyboard shortcuts can be found by going to your applications folder, then to "system preferences." From there look for the "keyboard and mouse preferences panel." Click on that, then go into "keyboard shortcuts."
Screen captures can only be saved in a PDF format, but you can convert it to another format by using the Export feature of the Preview application.
Screen captures cannot be altered in size once you've saved them. You can only change the size of a screen capture by changing the resolution on your monitor before you capture it.
