Grab Clean Leopard Window Shots with CleanGrab
Ryan Irelan doesn't like the way Leopard grabs window shots. When you press Command-Shift-4/Spacebar, Leopard includes about 50 extra pixels of transparent background around your Windows. This extra space grabs the window's drop shadow along with the window itself. Enter CleanGrab.
CleanGrab is Ryan's script for grabbing just the window, without the background pixels. He describes the script and offers a download link on his personal weblog. You'll either need to run the script directly or trigger it via a macro program like Quicksilver. The script essentially runs the command-line screencapture software using the -io flags. -i tells screencapture to run interactively. -o tells it to omit the window shadow.
If you'd rather just use the terminal command-line, issue a screencapture -io command. I've posted about this handy utility a few times at least.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mk said 3:36PM on 11-07-2007
Wow - i didn't know about the Command-Shift-4/Spacebar thing - i love os x.
Reply
bigman606 said 3:41PM on 11-07-2007
Hmmm, using the selection tool and crop works for me.
Reply
stompy said 5:15PM on 11-07-2007
Dear Apple, Please describe the situation that a user would want a drop shadow after explicitly doing a screen shot of the current window.
Reply
Bill Mac said 5:59PM on 11-07-2007
Whats wrong with the Grab-it application in your utilities foler? or is that gone from Leopard....
Reply
Flant said 6:26PM on 11-07-2007
but it's a beautiful transparent shadow and looks so sweet once placed into a doc over another graphic!
Reply
Yazdgerd said 7:02PM on 11-07-2007
I can not take any screenshots under leopard..
Reply
ACoolie said 7:11PM on 11-07-2007
Holding down the Command key in window capture changes the behaviour back to the Tiger version, not grabbing the shadow. I wish people would research their apps before making them.
Reply
KeynoteKen said 7:28PM on 11-07-2007
Bill Mac,
No, Grab.app is not gone and it does snap just the window without the drop shadow. I found this out when examining what differences Leopard might hold for Keynote.
http://www.keynoteuser.com/news/?p=254
Reply
vbbr said 7:32PM on 11-07-2007
50 extra pixels!!OMG, thats so many extra gigs of image file..
Reply
Rhywun said 8:05PM on 11-07-2007
"Holding down the Command key in window capture changes the behaviour back to the Tiger version"
Not for me. How exactly do you accomplish this? I hit Shift-Command-4, press the Space bar, then hold down Command and click a window--I still get the 50 pixels around the window. I looked in the Mac Help file and it only describes how to use Grab.
Reply
Graham Cox said 1:20AM on 11-08-2007
Dear Stompy, mostly every time. If you are preparing a software manual and want to include screenshots, the drop shadow makes the thing look not only ten times better on paper, but also what the user actually sees.
The only time you DON'T want a shadow is when you just need a quick and dirty shot for casual use.
Reply
lbarriocanal said 3:58PM on 11-16-2007
No more shadow with Shift-Command-4 after Leopard upgrade to 10.5.1 ¿?
I liked shadow effect.
Reply
Rich Deakin said 4:49PM on 11-20-2007
Grab does not open any more since my Leopard upgrade. I like the command-shift-spacebar function in Safari, but wondered why Grab has been corrupted. It is the only problem I have encountered since Leopardizing.
Reply