Change the Default Screen Capture format in OS X

kj, you can. Do something like this: defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Full/POSIX/path/to/folder For those that don't like the command line, I made an AppleScript app: http://scriptbuilders.net/files/screenshotsettings1.0.1.html

I'm on 10.4 and my screen captures always end-up as TIFFs. -- Elias

now that we know how to change the default file type.... does anyone know how to change the default save location from the desktop to a specific folder?

Actually, Dean, 10.0 and (I think) 10.1 made TIFFs by default, and one of them had a settable preference to switch formats.* Then 10.2 and 10.3 were all PDF, all the time. Personally, I'm glad they switched to a pure pixel-based format, rather than using PDF as a container of a raster image. It just caused lots of little problems. * I've got a B/W G3/400 that I plan to partition and install 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 on so I can answer questions like this more accurately. :-)

Thanks so much for point this app out, JPG much needed to show off to my windows friends.

I'm glad that they switched to png. In the earlier versions of Mac X it was a pdf. And way back in the day (pre-OSX) it was .pict. I'll gladly use png screen shots.

cocktail also takes care of that . . .

This can also be done in Terminal using the following two commands: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format killall SystemUIServer