Skip to Content

Grab Clean Leopard Window Shots with CleanGrab

by Erica Sadun Nov 7th 2007 at 3:00PM


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.



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

How-tos Leopard

Ryan Irelan doesn't like the way Leopard grabs window shots. When you press Command-Shift-4/Spacebar, Leopard includes about 50 extra...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

13 Comments

Filter by:
lbarriocanal

No more shadow with Shift-Command-4 after Leopard upgrade to 10.5.1 ¿?
I liked shadow effect.

November 16 2007 at 1:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rich Deakin

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.

November 15 2007 at 8:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rhywun

"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.

November 07 2007 at 8:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vbbr

50 extra pixels!!OMG, thats so many extra gigs of image file..

November 07 2007 at 7:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
KeynoteKen

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

November 07 2007 at 7:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ACoolie

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.

November 07 2007 at 7:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yaz

I can not take any screenshots under leopard..

November 07 2007 at 6:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Flant

but it's a beautiful transparent shadow and looks so sweet once placed into a doc over another graphic!

November 07 2007 at 6:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bill Mac

Whats wrong with the Grab-it application in your utilities foler? or is that gone from Leopard....

November 07 2007 at 5:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Graham Cox

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.

November 07 2007 at 5:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.