OS X Screenshot Options

Other options are:

Press Cmd-Shift-4 to turn your cursor into a tiny + symbol. Now drag diagonally across the screen to capture only a square chunk of it. When you release the mouse, you hear the camera-click sound and the file is on the desktop.

Add Caps Lock to the Cmd-Shift-4 keystroke to turn your cursor into a bullseye symbol. Now you can capture only one window or dialog box – after you click inside it. This trick saves you the trouble of cropping out unnecessary background details in your graphics program.

Add Control to either of those keystrokes if you want the resulting image to be copied onto your Clipboard, ready for pasting into, for example, Photoshop, instead of creating a PICT file on your hard drive.

• Spacebar to drag the selected capture region around the screen.
• Shift Key to vertically or horizontally lock the capture region.
• Option Key to expand or reduce the size of the region proportionately.
• Hold down both the Shift Key + Space Bar to lock in the horizontal or vertical while moving the locked selection.

Set a Designated Screen Shot Folder

Instead of your screen shots cluttering the desktop, change the location to where they are saved:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/Screenshots/

Then restart of SystemUIServer for changes to take effect:

killall SystemUIServer

Change the Screen Shot Image File Format

PNG not your format of choice?:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

Restart SystemUIServer for JPG to be set as the new file type:

killall SystemUIServer