Don't use your phone's camera to take a picture of your Mac's screen. Instead, use the built-in screen capture tool to take a clean detailed screenshot.
You can also watch this video at YouTube.
Watch more videos about related subjects: Screenshots (6 videos).
You can also watch this video at YouTube.
Watch more videos about related subjects: Screenshots (6 videos).
Video Transcript
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you the correct way to take a screenshot on your Mac.
So if you're ever been asked to take a screenshot on what you see on your Mac don't pull out your iPhone and take a picture of it like this. Instead, on your Mac just hold down the Command and Shift keys and Press 5. This will bring up Screenshot Controls here at the bottom. Make sure the first item Capture Entire Screen is selected. Click Option and then you'll see where the screenshot will be saved to. You probably have it set to the Desktop but you can choose any folder you'd like. Also check to see whether Show Floating Thumbnail is selected.
Now just click the Capture Button. A screenshot will be taken and you'll see a floating thumbnail at the bottom right. If you want you can click it and it you can do lots of things to it. Like mark it up, for instance. You can just click Done and it will appear at its destination, in this case the Desktop. Or you could have just waited a few seconds for the floating thumbnail to go away and the screenshot will appear here.
Now you have a standard image file that you can post online or send to somebody.
On my iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) because its an older model - the latest I can equip it is 10.13.6 ---the Command-Shift-5 key does nothing for me - nothing happens. I assume its because you are referring the the latest OS? Only the C-S-3 & 4 works. Thanks
Victor: It has been around for a long time, actually, But OS X 10.13 is from 2017 so that's too old to have it.
Thanks bunches. Merry Christmas
MBP M2-Pro @ 14.2.1
Q: Is there any way to change the default screenshots from PNG to JPG or anything else? I'd like to capture screens with a smaller KB/MB than the PNG format. Thanks.
Larry: You can do that with a terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg;killall SystemUIServer
Hi Gary, Preview drives me crazy with its instance on making every PNG with an alpha channel. I figure if anyone knew how to stop this default setting it would be you. Thank you for all you do for the Apple community. ❤️👍
Lindy: What's the issue? What's wrong with having an alpha channel?
2023 Mac M3 chip: I can take the screenshot with the floating thumbnail but when I single click the thumbnail, the editing tool bar (markup, etc.) does not appear. What am I doing incorrectly?
Charlie: Do you see any tools at the top? Do you see the button to bring up the markup tools (circle with a pen tip in it)?
Thanks for responding.... I rarely need the image to be in alpha mode AND the images are larger. I can live with it... but if there is a way to turn it off when I don't need it that would be great. As it stands now I have to do each image individually. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
LINDY: If there is nothing in the alpha channel (it is a completely opaque image) then it shouldn't be much larger. PNGs are compressed, so if the whole alpha channel is a bunch of 255 (maximum opaque) values then it should compress to almost nothing. I think if you really want 24-bit PNG images and you can't get that from Preview, then the solution is to switch to using a real image editing app like Pixelmator, Acorn, Affinity, Photoshop, etc.
Thank you so much for your reply and clarification, Gary - I have Affinity Photo! Excellent program!
I dropped Adobe after they went for the subscription route.