This month’s tip is for the Macintosh and is known to work on all OS’s 7.x through 9.x. This tip will come in handy when you want to capture a screen for a document or to provide a customer with a screen shot of a program. It can also be handy for those engineers who need to see exactly what is on a customer’s screen.
Get the screen you want up and then decide which you want to do; a sectional capture or an entire screen capture. To capture the entire screen, press the Command Key and while holding the key down, press the three (3) key.
The resultant file will be saved as a file named Picture1 through PictureX where X is the current number of screen capture you have performed.
To do a partial screen capture, Hold down the Command key and press the four (4) key. A crossbar will appear on the screen. Move the mouse to the corner of the area you wish to capture. Press the mouse button and hold it down. Now move the mouse without releasing the mouse button to the opposing corner of the capture area. Release the mouse button. The file again is stored in the root directory of your hard drive in the same filename format as the complete screen capture.
The resultant files are all .PICT files and can be edited with almost any graphics editing program on the market today.
Quick Reference
Command + 3 — Entire Screen
Command + 4 — Partial Capture
Mouse — Hold Button to Start Capture
Release Button to End Capture
Storage Location — Root directory of Hard Drive
File Format — .PICT Picture file
