Filed under: Cool tools, Tips and tricks
Screenshot Settings 1.1 applescript
Just like its title implies, Screenshot Settings 1.1 is a simple little GUI
applescript that allows you to change both the image format Mac OS X uses to capture screenshots, as well as the
default location where these images are stored. While altering Mac OS X's screenshot format is pretty simple with this little utility (see: this post's screenshot), the trick to choosing a new default location for storing screenshots is a little less obvious: simply drag the new location from Finder onto the utility to set it as the screenshot hotspot for your Mac.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Paul said 5:23PM on 3-27-2006
I prefer SCIT 1.0... i dont mind screenshots directly to my desktop, althought i could see how it is handy.
http://www.daniele.ch/downloads.html
Reply
Brent said 5:29PM on 3-27-2006
I have been wanting something like this forever - to save screenshots as jpgs. Not sure why Apple chose to save screenshots as Pngs. I don't even know anything about pngs.
Paul - I used the ap you linked to. Works great. Thanks.
Reply
David Kelly said 5:43PM on 3-27-2006
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/business/capture.html
Much much better.
Reply
Dan said 6:24PM on 3-27-2006
David K - excellent tip. Have any of you noticed that screen shots are always slighty out of focus or blurry? Make a screen shot (area) and open it up right next to what you've just captured - does it look a little "soft" to you? It doesn't seem to matter which file format is chosen. This drives me nuts! Checking the resolution in Photoshop, it does indeed say 72 dpi - but it looks slightly scaled horizontally - maybe it's just me...
Dan
Reply
David Kelly said 6:43PM on 3-27-2006
Dan,
I took quite a few screenshots I couldn't necessarily pick up anything that you speak of, I will admit that making a jpg seemed to lower the quality but a PNG managed to keep it looking sharp and vivid.
Anybody else have problems with that widget?
Reply
Dan said 6:53PM on 3-27-2006
I don't think it's just my eyes - I've have screen shot to illustrate my point. If the capture was clean, the recurring screen shots would not get blurrier and blurrier. Here's a shot (of this page) that contains recurring captures (6) - notice that the smallest one is really blurry - file type was set to .png:
http://www.capellasolazzo.com/storage/temp/recurring_capture.png
Dan
Reply
TJ said 7:28PM on 3-27-2006
Though there seems to be several utilities that allow for format changing, and though I don't mind that default is saved to desktop, I would however like to be able to toggle if a screen-shot's extension is hidden or not. I know it might be real simple but I like to have my images, doc, media to show extensions. I could check to show all extensions under the Finder's preferences, but I don't like seeing the application extensions...
Any one know of a fix or solution for this?
Reply
Brian Ashe said 11:22PM on 3-27-2006
Dan: the problem is that Preview sucks. If the image doesn't fit into the Preview window (i.e., if you take a wole-screen screenshot, then open it, Preview shrinks it so the whole image is visible, but it'll be smaller to make room for menu bars, toolbars, etc.) Preview slightly resizes the image and then anti-aliases it. Open it in Photoshop (or even Safari) and it'll look perfect. To prove this, take a partial-screen screenshot (shift-command-4, then click-n-drag a rectangle) then open it in Preview. It should look fine, if it all fits. Now, start making the Preview window smaller. See what happens? Then: take a whole screen screenshot and open it with Safari. You'll have to scroll, but it'll look perfect.
Reply
James Donevan said 3:15AM on 3-28-2006
Brian: That happens because of your own personal choice of 'View' settings, not any inherent fault in Preview. If you have it set to 'Zoom to Fit' only, it will do as you suggest. If it is set to 'Actual Size/Zoom to Fit' it retains the original's sizing intact.
Reply
Dan said 10:00AM on 3-28-2006
Brian - I still don't think that's the problem - I have set Preview not scale the image if it's small enough to fit on screen (actual pixels.) But, I decided to try the same experiment in PhotoShop and the results were almost identical. It's not as easy to align because of the right-hand scroll bar, but as you can see from this screenshot, I've aligned the left edge of each screen shot to the top, and on subsequent screen shots, the image drifts down and gets blurry. Notice how mis-aligned the text fields are on the lower left. I don't like it.
http://www.capellasolazzo.com/storage/temp/recurring2.png
Dan
Reply