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Snow Leopard nice touch: no more "Picture 1" files

by Michael Rose Aug 30th 2009 at 3:00PM


I've always been a fan of ⌘-Shift-4 for taking quick and easy screenshots on my Mac, even with such level-up options as Jing, Skitch, GrabUp and LittleSnapper readily to hand. What I wasn't a fan of, however, was the proliferation of "Picture 1," "Picture 2,"... up to "Picture N" screenshot files on my desktop. Not only was it tricky to figure out which Picture file was which (a task made easier with Quick Look), it was also reasonably likely that at some point I'd overwrite a Picture 1 someplace that I wanted to keep with a brand-new Picture 1 I just snapped and copied off my desktop.

It's certainly not one of the marquee features of Mac OS X 10.6, but there's one little Snow Leopard tweak that's already won my heart: no more Picture 1s! Screenshots to file created via the system key commands (⌘-Shift-3 or -4, add the Control key to capture to the Clipboard instead of to a file) now get a name that's quite a bit more descriptive, including the date and time of the capture. No more file name collisions, no more wondering which Picture is the one you took of that cryptic error message in the middle of the night. Viva Snow!



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I've always been a fan of ⌘-Shift-4 for taking quick and easy screenshots on my Mac, even with such level-up options as Jing, Skitch,...
 

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pman530

how do you find the pictures once you take the screenshots? I know they are in the clipboard but I can't paste them anywhere or view them as a file.

October 05 2009 at 10:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to pman530's comment
Michael Rose

They're not in the clipboard, they're on the desktop -- unless you add the Control key to the key command.

October 06 2009 at 2:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pman530

thanks!

October 06 2009 at 7:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jambrose

I think this sucks for different reasons. Before, I knew if I took a screen cap, it would be at the bottom of the list when I looked at desktop in finder. Now, it sorts based NOT on actual time/date but on the numbers in the time date. For example:
1:10:30PM
2:25:20PM
9:22:12AM
11:33:00PM

Boo. Now I have to look at the clock when I take a screen shot? And why still can't I specify the destination? Who really wants this on the desktop?

The screen cap command in OS X is invaluable, and I love it, but I wish they could squeeze out that last bit of suck.

September 29 2009 at 11:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mhettinger

I'm confused. I found this conversation because I can't figure out how upgrading to Snow Leopard has seemingly disabled the screenshot keys. Everyone here is talking about new functionality, but for me, the screenshot key combinations just don't work at all.

September 18 2009 at 8:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bakari

Yeah, but why not have a window pop open so that you can type in a custom name before the file is placed on the desktop.

September 05 2009 at 8:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
scstsut

Too bad.

If they had just put the AM/PM before the time it would have sorted properly!

You'll get:
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at 10.23.45 AM.jpg
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at 10.23.45 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at 10.23.47 AM.jpg
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at 10.23.47 PM.jpg

Instead of:
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at AM 10.23.45.jpg
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at AM 10.23.47.jpg
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at PM 10.23.45.jpg
Screen shot 2009-08-29 at PM 10.23.47.jpg

August 31 2009 at 5:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to scstsut's comment
scstsut

I'd prefer:
090829a102945.jpg
090829a102947.jpg
myself.

August 31 2009 at 5:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Anthony Starks

This shell script replicates the Snow Leopard behavior on older OS X versions:

#!/bin/sh
loc="Screen shot "`date "+%Y-%m-%d at %l.%M.%S %p"`.png
screencapture -iW "$HOME/Desktop/$loc"

August 31 2009 at 3:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pedro

SWEET. I do wish however, that they would have a small screengrab application in utilities! The keyboard commands are great, don't get me wrong, but shouldn't be the ONLY way to access the functionality!

August 31 2009 at 2:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Pedro's comment
Michael Rose

There is -- it's called Grab.

August 31 2009 at 10:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joe Cabrera

FYI anyone wanting to change the default filetype for screen captures can easily do it with TinkerTool.

August 31 2009 at 2:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Indigo

Nooooo! Can I still have "picture 1"?

Look how (almost) identical your image names are; about 33 characters in before any difference. How is this easier than "picture1" ;"picture2" etc? Only 10 characters in.

Short columns in finder windows, wraparound text in icon widows -all make it harder to differentiate between files.

I for one have never had picture 1 overwrite and existing pic. They just pick the earliest available name slot on my desktop.

August 31 2009 at 12:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David

AHHHHH!! Thank goodness!
I'm an art student who is fond, well obssesed, with concept art and whenever I see something nice I would shift-cmd-4 and like yourself, rewrite over countless "picture 1" over and over. Excellent new feature! My copy comes on monday, I hope. Can't wait to use Snow Leopard!

August 31 2009 at 2:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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