scrot and import are two commands, which can be used to take screenshot in terminal on Linux and FreeBSD:
To use scrot cmd to take screenshots on Ubuntu and Debian the scrot package has to be installed:
noah:~# apt-get install scrot
...
scrot should also be available on most other Linux distributions in the main repositories, I'll be glad to hear if someone has used it on Fedora, SUSE etc.
On FreeBSD, there is a port called scrot , to install on FreeBSD:
freebsd# cd /usr/ports/graphics/scrot
freebsd# make install clean
...
Scrot has plenty of nice arguments one can use to make a screenshot. Maybe the most handy one in my view is after a preliminary set delay before screenshot is taken.
To take screenshot with it after lets say 5 seconds delay before the screenshot:
hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ scrot -t 20 -d 5
To put an year, month and day and year followed by screen resolution with scrot :
hipo@noah:~$ scrot '%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png'
Another way to take a screenshot of screen with command is by using ImageMagick's – import image manipulation package.
To take screenshot of the current screen via terminal using import , type in xterm, gnome-termina or Gnome's Run Application (ALT+F2)
hipo@noah:~$ import -window root ScreenShot.png
To make import command to save the taken screenshot in a format (minute:hour:day:month:year)i :
hipo@noah:~$ import -window root $screenshot_dir/screenshot-$(date +%M_%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//').png
Taking a delayed screenshot is also possible via The GIMP via menus File -> Create -> Screenshot
Now here is an interesting question, what if I would like to take periodic screenshots of what I do on my Desktop to take random movie scenes from a movie I watch with totem or vlc??
This task is quite easily achiavable with a little bash shell script, I wrote:
screenshot_dir='Screenshots';
seconds='60';
if [ ! -d "$screenshot_dir" ]; then
mkdir $screenshot_dir;
fi
while [ 1 ]; do
sleep $seconds;
(import -window root $screenshot_dir/screenshot-$(date +%M_%k_%d_%m_%Y|sed -e 's/^ *//').png) &
done
This script will take screenshot automatically to Screenshots/ directory every (1 min – 60 seconds)
You can also my downloads take_screenshot_every_60_secs_import.sh here
To use take_screenshot_every_60_secs_import.sh just issue the script inside xterm or gnome-terminal, after that simply use your computer as you normally would.
The script will take snapshots every minute and store all taken screenshots in Screenshots dir.
If you prefer to use scrot to take automatically the screenshots every lets say 5 minutes, you can use a script like:
screenshot_dir='Screenshots';
# 300 secs (5 mins)seconds='300';
if [ ! -d "$screenshot_dir" ]; then
mkdir $screenshot_dir;
fi
while [ 1 ]; do
sleep $seconds;
(scrot $screenshot_dir/'%Y-%m-%d_$wx$h.png') &
done
You can fetch take_screenshot_every_60_secs_scrot.sh here
The script using scrot is better in terms of efficiency, the system load scrot will put on your machine will be less.
Using some of this scripts will be handy if you need screenshots to Movies, Programs and favourite Free Software games.
Hope this is educative to someone 😉
