Filed under: Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard nice touch: no more "Picture 1" files
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
joshua said 3:14PM on 8-30-2009
Noticed this yesterday. I love it.
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raages said 3:15PM on 8-30-2009
Hi,
Same thing in "Photo Booth"
;)
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Emrah Omuris said 3:16PM on 8-30-2009
That's what Snow Leopard is about... These little touches makes me love Apple more and more every day...
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Josh said 3:20PM on 8-30-2009
This was a huge annoyance for me in Leopard. I like it this way. Now if only they would let users manually choose where to save their screenshots without a Terminal command.
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Dave Wouters said 3:27PM on 8-30-2009
What exactly is that terminal command to change the place where it's put? I can't remember any more
bob said 3:28PM on 8-30-2009
grab (built in app) lets you though not as easy as a keyboard command
Josh said 3:31PM on 8-30-2009
@Dave: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050824073301844
Amerist said 7:12PM on 8-30-2009
Get the "Secrets" prefpane. http://secrets.blacktree.com/ Not all of them work in SL but some of the tweaks are worth having the prefpane installed for quick switching of options.
EricW said 8:47PM on 8-30-2009
Definitely an improvement, but the title is a bit long. I wish you could select from a couple of options, and yes, being able to select where they're saved would be nice controlling, too.
Hoyt L Kesterson II said 3:28PM on 8-30-2009
I concur with your excitement but shouldn't it be w00t
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Marc said 3:34PM on 8-30-2009
already mentioned here
http://www.maceinsteiger.de/mac-os/snow-leopard-testbericht/
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Faris said 12:32AM on 9-01-2009
i think the new image capture app is really nice and functional
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DanyG said 4:03PM on 8-30-2009
Skitch... It's free !!!
and muuuuch better than the built-in screen capture....
http://skitch.com/
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Martin said 4:08PM on 8-30-2009
^ this
mrfine said 4:12PM on 8-30-2009
Look for a program called "Sharp Shooter" it rocks!
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Adrian said 4:13PM on 8-30-2009
Better yet, you can take screenshots while DVD Player is running. Instead of prohibiting you (which was very annoying when you have a movie playing on a second monitor for instance), it now simply shows a Photoshop-like grid where the DVD video was.
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TrendGiveAfuck said 4:14PM on 8-30-2009
Arrr, 'tis be pleasn' to me eye.
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James Burton said 5:42PM on 8-30-2009
This is sure gonna come in handy while taking screenshots for University Assignments at 1am!
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Chris said 5:43PM on 8-30-2009
One more nice touch: Try pressing shift f-11 ten times. It's fixed!
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ed said 8:15PM on 8-30-2009
I am psyched on the screenshot naming. But in Leopard I would take a screenshot to clipboard by hitting Command-Control-Shift-4 then paste into a Mac Mail message. After "upgrading" to Snow Leopard it is disabled. Now I have to save the SC to the desktop and then drag it into mac mail. It's a.... drag...
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