How do I take a screenshot?

A screenshot is an image taken of the desktop. It is often used for demonstrations, guides or troubleshooting by sharing the desktop or application.

Example of a screenshot

Working as a system administrator, you learn the art of taking screenshots for writing documentation. I must admit screenshots are also useful when you have a technical blog.

I remember when I first bought a Mac, I wanted to show a friend how nice my new Mac was but I didn't know how to create a screenshot to send to him. After some research on the Internet I found that there were multiple ways to create screenshots as follows:

Command Combination	Description
⌘+Shift+3	This takes a screenshot of the screen, and saves the image as a file on the desktop
⌘+Shift+4	This brings up a pointer to select an area on your desktop and saves the image as a file on the desktop
⌘+Shift+4+Space	This allows you to select a window you would like to make a screenshot of and saves the image as a file on the desktop
⌘+Control+Shift+3	This takes a screenshot of the screen, and saves the image to the clipboard for pasting to image editors
⌘+Control+Shift+4	This brings up a pointer to select an area on your desktop and saves the image to the clipboard for pasting to image editors
⌘+Control+Shift+4+Space	This allows you to select a window you would like to make a screenshot of and saves the image to the clipboard for pasting to image editors

There are also 3rd party applications which can also take screenshots, one of them being Grab which is pre-installed inside the Utilities folder. But for most requirements, the key combinations above should be enough.