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Mac Tip: Take Screenshots From Within The Preview Application

Mac Tip: Take Screenshots From Within The Preview Application

This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.


How to: Take Screenshots From Within The Preview Application

Besides keystrokes and a specific built-in application called GRAB you can also use Preview to take a series of screen shots In Mac OS X.

In order to take screen shots using Preview you will need to have Preview open and proceed to File > Take Screen Shot. From here three options will pop out as can be seen below:

From Selection: This will simply allow the user click and drag anywhere on the display. You will notice that a grey box and a cross hair pointer will appear when this option is selected. When the grey box outlines what you would like to capture simply let go of the mouse and the captured area will appear in a new window in Preview.

From Window: This will allow the user to select a window they would like to capture. You will notice when selecting a window that an image of a camera is shown. Moving from window to window on your display will highlight the window in question in grey. Once you are happy with the selected grey window simply click the mouse and an exact replica of the window you chose will be presented in Preview.

From Entire Screen: When you select this option you will get a countdown for about 5 seconds. Once it is down to zero it will then take a screen shot of your entire display and then load it into preview.

During the process of all three options you can simply press the escape (esc) key on your keyboard to cancel the process.

Please also note that the file created within preview will not be automatically saved. You will need to perform this function manually.