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Grab
Macintosh OS X |
Taking Screen Shots in OS X with Grab
You can still use the OS 9 keystrokes to take screen shots
on your OS X Mac, but instead of giving you an image file, a pdf file will
be created. While useful in some cases, it is often important to be able
to save a screen shot as an image instead of a pdf. To do this in OS X,
you must use a utility called Grab.
Where to find this software
Grab for OS X can be found
on any Macintosh Computer running OS X.
Getting Started
-
Click on the Finder icon in the Dock.
- From the Go menu, choose Applications.
- Open the Utilities folder and double-click on the Grab icon.
- In Grab,
from the Capture menu, choose one
of the following options to take a screen shot:
Note: Grab pop-up window will not
be included in the screen capture.
a. Selection - will give you the option to click and drag
around the area you want to capture.
-
Once you choose this option, the Selection
Grab pop-up
window will appear.
- To the left of your mouse pointer, a
little box with numbers,
indicating the coordinates of where
you
are
pointing, will appear.
- Unless you want to cancel
the
task
by
clicking
on Cancel, click
and drag the mouse over the area
of the screen
you want
to
capture.
- As soon as you release
the mouse, the captured screen
will appear in a new window.
The image below is an example
of a screen captured using the Selection option.
b. Screen - will capture the entire screen.
Note: Before
choosing this option, you can go to Grab > Preferences to
choose the type of pointer you want to appear
on the screen.
-
Once
you choose this option,
a pop-up window labeled Screen
Grab will
appear.
- If you want to cancel you can click on Cancel.
If you want to capture the current screen, click on any area
on the screen besides
that pop-up window.
Note: if you have
selected a pointer
in Grab Preferences, be sure to click on the area where
you want
the pointer to be superimposed on the captured screen.
- Wait
a couple
of seconds after you click for the captured screen window to appear in
a new window.
The image below is an example of a screen
captured using the Screen option.
c. Timed Screen - will give you 10 seconds to arrange
the screen as you want it to be captured.
Note: Before choosing this option,
you can go to Grab > Preferences to
choose the type of pointer
you want to appear on the screen.
-
Once you select
this option, you
will see a pop-up window, Timed
Screen Grab,
that tells you
that the screen
will be captured
in 10 seconds.
- Click on Cancel to cancel the task within
10 seconds.
To capture the screen, click
on Start
Timer and
arrange the screen the
way you want it to be
captured (i.e. select
an area to be highlighted,
click on
a link to show
what happens, etc.).
- Wait for Grab to take a screen shot, which is indicated
by the red timer next to a camera shown on the Timed
Screen Grab window.
- A captured screen window
will appear in a new window. (This option
works well
for taking screen shots of Classic
applications.)
The images below are an example of a screen
captured using the Timed
Screen option.
The first
image shows
the
entire screen
captured
using the
option while
the second
image is
a close-up
version
of the first
image. Notice
that the Timed
Screen shot
enables
you to
take
a picture
of the
screen
while
you activate
the
pop-up
menu
by clicking
on a
link.
- Once the captured image appears in a new
window, from the Grab File menu
choose Save.
- Give the file a name and choose
the location you want to save it to. The file
will be saved as a tiff file.
- The
saved file can be opened in Graphic
Converter, Fireworks, Photoshop,
etc for editing or converting the
file into a different format (gif,
jpg, etc).
- To find out more about converting
files
in Graphic Converter,
refer to: http://www.wellesley.edu/Computing/Graphicconverter/gcediting.html#converting.
-
When you are finished taking screen shots, from the Grab menu,
choose Quit
Grab.
- Heather Woods, hwoods@wellesley.edu
- Information Services
- Date Created: July 26, 2001
- Last Modified:
October 20, 2003
- Page Expires: July 1, 2004