how to takes screenshot on mac

You might occasionally need to capture the
image on your computer screen so you can
save or share it. If you've used a PC designed
to run Microsoft Windows, you've probably
used the Print Screen key on the keyboard to
do this. If you're using a Mac, though, you'll
notice Apple doesn't include such a key. Don't
worry, though, because we're about to look at
the keyboard combinations and built-in tools
you can use on your Mac to capture what you
need from the screen.
First, let's look at the keyboard combinations
you can use to capture the image on your
screen. The keystrokes for screenshots are
multiple keys that should be pressed together.
When you do this, press and hold the first key,
then the second, and so forth, and immediately
release all keys after pressing the final one in
the sequence. The following are the keystrokes
to remember for screen capturing:
Command+Shift+3 captures the entire screen
and saves it to a file on your desktop.
Command+Shift+4 temporarily replaces your
mouse cursor with a tool to select any
rectangular portion of the screen. Click and
drag the tool to make your selection. Your
cursor immediately returns to normal after
that selection.
Control added to the start of either of these
sequences saves the image to the clipboard
temporarily instead of to a permanent file.
That allows you to copy and paste what you
see on the screen into an application, such as
image editing software.
If you don't use the Control key, your Mac
saves these keystroke captures to your desktop
by default. When you're capturing images this
way, you won't see any system or app
notifications to verify success. Instead, the
system just plays a chime that sounds like a
film camera snapping a photo. To see the files
you're saving, you'll have to either open your
Finder or minimize your windows to find the
images saved on the desktop.
Mac OS X traditionally saved keyboard-
generated screenshots as tagged image file
format (TIFF) files. Macs switched to portable
document format (PDF) starting in the 10.2
release of OS X, and to portable network
graphics (PNG) files by 10.6. Later, we'll look
at how you can convert any of these images to
other file formats.
While keystrokes let you get a quick capture
from the screen, they have limited options for
what you're capturing. That's where the Grab
utility comes in. Next, let's take a look at how
to use Grab, including how to capture a
specific window and how to time the capture
to include things like mouse-over text or drop-
down menus.