How to take a picture of part of your screen.

Did you know that if you hold down SHIFT-COMMAND-4 you can take a picture of any part of your screen? Press SHIFT-COMMAND-4 and your cursor will turn into a cross-hair. (Try it right now!) Click and drag over anything and you can take a picture. It’s how most of the small pictures on this website are made.

Useful for all kinds of things, for example:

Grab a screenshot of a keynote graph:
Picture 5

Grab a heading from pages:
Picture 6

Grab a receipt from a webpage:
Picture 7

The top of your screen:
Picture 4

Or any information you want to keep:
Picture 2

I use Shift-Apple-4 a few times every day!
Also, Shift-Apple-3 takes a shot of the entire screen – I use this much less.

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7 responses to “How to take a picture of part of your screen.”

  1. David

    This is a great tip, but you need to add that it saves the image as “screenshot DATE TIME” on your desktop – this is not immediately obvious.
    Can it be set to save the image somewhere else if one wanted?

    Reply
  2. Nittn

    this is cool !!!! Thanks

    Reply
  3. Rob Woof

    After you do shift-apple-4, hit the space bar. That then allows you to select just a single window or dialogue box (complete with groovy drop-shadow). If you want a whole window or dialogue, it saves fiddling.

    Reply
    1. Wayne

      Good one Rob!

      Reply
  4. Jen

    This is great… as a start. I got the crosshairs and selected the part of the screen I want, but now what? How do you actually get it o take the pic???

    Reply
    1. Wayne

      Let go of the mouse and it will take the picture. Check your desktop – it should be there.

      Reply
  5. Kay Doolittle

    Wow! This is really neat. I knew how to do other screen shots using both hands, but this is so, so much better (and cleaner). Thanks so much!

    Reply

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