Creativebits.org

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Ivan's picture

Screenshot with transparent background

penny If you need to take a nice and clean screenshot of a window or especially a Dashboard widget press Apple-Shift-4 and than Space. The cursor will change to a cute little photography apparatus and you will be able to point to out which window or widget you'd like to take a snapshot of. You will get a png file on your desktop. Note the semi transparent shadows and glows that you get around the widgets when you drag the png into Photoshop.

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eklay641's picture
20 pencils

Thanks!!

mrjain's picture
61 pencils

ivan,

awesome find. this tip is great but i'll use this maybe 2 or 3 times and forget the command sequence.

Question is - How do you folks keep track of some of these gems? Yes, my brain is one option but right now it's filled to capacity with dumber brain cells.

mrj

Ivan's picture

To be honest I have to look up tips on cb sometimes. I remember that there was an easy way to do a certain thing, but can't remember how. So, I search for it on google: keyword1 keyword2 site:creativebits.org. Usually google gives me better search results than the built in search function of cb.

colin's picture
5 pencils

When I do this, I get a PDF file on the desktop, not PNG.

Ivan's picture

Yes, sorry. It is a pdf in Panther. Png in Tiger.

Stukdog's picture
1 pencil

That is a great tip. Thanks for posting it.

Jammo's picture
0 pencils

Brilliant tip!

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Online Portfolio - in progress
jammindesigns.com

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Goo

r0sss's picture
35 pencils

Wow, I did not know this - awesome tip.

Drugo's picture
99 pencils

Ivan, you are the king of tips and shortcut!

BlankPage

liamparkinson's picture
43 pencils

nice :-)

- Liam

afterglow's picture
571 pencils

Hit control while you're doing it to copy to clipboard so you can paste straight into Photoshop.Very handy for mockup work.

www.afterglow.ie

r0sss's picture
35 pencils

You can also move the camera over almost anything on your screen...Forexample move the camera over a folder on the desktop, an icon in the dock, even the menu bar up top.

Cool!

Ivan's picture

Wow! That's probably the easiest way to steal an icon. The only downsize is that you must have the icon in it's biggest size in your dock for optimal effect.

Ben's picture
121 pencils

That is too cool! Way to go Apple for actually building this feature into the OS. Thanks Ivan.

BENLEIVIAN.com

jasongraphix's picture
26 pencils

I was going to say that if you could add SPACE to the Apple-Shift-4 combo, it'd be really cool if you could add it to the Apple-Ctrl-Shift-4 combo to copy to the clipboard. It worked! ...but Afterglow already commented. Drats. :)

jasongraphix's picture
26 pencils

You could use gmail to keep track of that stuff. This one's going into my gmail repository.

Creativebits is a blog about creativity, design and Macs. We also have a critique section where you can post your work to get opinions and a forum to discuss any design related topics.

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