In many instances, capturing an image of what is happening on your Mac's screen is useful. One example is if you are writing instructions about how to do a particular task. Another is when you want to capture an error message or some other anomaly you want to be able to explain to someone (for example, you might want to capture the image of an error dialog box so that you can e-mail it when you try to get technical support). With Mac OS X, you have two built-in ways to capture screen images. One is to use keyboard commands. The other is to use the Grab application. Capturing Screen Images with Keyboard ShortcutsMac OS X includes keyboard commands you can use to capture desktop images. After you capture an image, it will be stored on your desktop as a PDF and will be called Picture X, where X is a sequential number. You have the following two options:
Capturing Screen Images with GrabMac OS X includes the Grab application. As its name implies, using Grab, you can "grab" an image of your Mac's desktop. There are several options you can use to capture a specific image. To capture a desktop image, follow these steps:
The images you capture with Grab are just like images you create in other ways. You can open them in image-editing applications, preview them in Preview, print them, and so on. TIP Grab's capturing capabilities are provided to the OS so that other applications can use them. For example, if you are working in a Carbon or Cocoa application, you can easily grab an image of its screen by choosing the Services command from that application's menu. Then, choose Grab and choose the type of grab from the menu. When you release the mouse button, the image you captured will be displayed. How it is displayed depends on the application from which you captured it. For example, if you grab an image while you are using TextEdit, a Rich Text Format (RTF) file will be created. If you grab an image while using Preview, that image will appear in the Pasteboard window. NOTE
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