Using Print Screen on Mac OS X is quite easy. In a PC, unless you are using Snipping Tool provided with higher versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, you have to necessarily copy the screen capture to an image editor to get the final result whereas in Mac the screen capture can be automatically saved to the desktop.
To Print Screen on MAC OS X, you can either use a combination of keys or built in utilities. The combination of keys will vary according to the type of screen capture that you want. In this article we will discuss in detail various keyboard shortcuts that can be used to capture screen in Mac OS X.
1 . Print Screen entire Desktop
To take a screen capture of entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3 and release. This will automatically save the screenshot to your desktop in either .png or .pdf format.
2 . Print Screen entire desktop and copy to clipboard
To take a screen capture of the entire desktop press Command-Control-Shift-3. The screen shot will be copied to clipboard, which can now be used with another program.
3 . Print Screen a Portion of Desktop
Press Command-Shift-4. A cross hair cursor will appear. You can click and drag it to select the area you wish to capture. Once you release the mouse button the screen capture will be automatically saved to your desktop in either .png or .pdf format.
4 . Print Screen a portion of Desktop and copy to clipboard
Press Command-Control-Shift-4 and release. Follow the same steps as above
5 .Print Screen of an Application Window
To take screen capture of an Application window, press Command-Shift-4, and then press Spacebar. The cursor icon will change into a camera icon. When you move this camera icon over an application window, the window will be highlighted. Press your mouse button to take the print screen of the application window. The screen capture will be automatically saved to the desktop in .png format.
6 . Print Screen of an Application Window and copy to clipboard
Press Command-Control-Shift-4 and then Spacebar. Follow the same steps as above.