Taking screenshots on Linux on major graphical
environments and in terminal
I needed to make some screenshots for a E-marketing project I'm
working currently on. So in that relation I took the time to do a
quick research about nowadays Linux abilities of making a
screenshot of either the screen or some screen element.
After spending some time reading articles explaining various ways
on making screenshots I've finally built up a new article which
incorporates many of the things I've red in different articles in
one:
So this article I'll explain about the most popular available tools
you can use on Linux to make a screenshot of your screen or a
screen element:
1. Take full screnshot with gnome-screenshot
If you're a gnome user like me you will probably appreaciate the
default feature of Gnome which is pretty much similar to the
support in Microsoft Windows of the
Print Screen (PrtScr)
button.
Pressing
PrtScr in gnome will launch the
gnome-screenshot program, since the gnome-screenshot is a
separate program, you can also always invoke it directly as a
command in Gnome by pressing
ALT+F2 and typing
gnome-screenshot in the dialog to appear.
2. Taking an advanced screenshot on Linux with shutter
Shutter is a bit advanced piece of screenshot taking software if I
have to compare with everything else I've encountered for
Linux.
It's again graphical just like
gnome-screenshot and is also
a gnome application built on top of the Gnome GTK library
frontend.
This app is trying to fill the gap currently in the softwares
available for making screenshot on Linux.
One major "pitfall" with the gnome-screenshot application for
instance is that it's not able to make screenshot of regions or
specific windows present on the screen.
Anyways this nice tool shutter actually supports all you need to
make a customized screenshot on your Linux desktop.
Shutter supports:
2.1. Making screenshot of a screen selection
2.2. Making screenshot of your fullscreen
2.3. Making a Window Screenshot
2.4. Windows section capturer
2.5. Preparing Screenshot of a menu or cascading application
2.6. Upload the picked up snapshots with Shutter to an External FTP
host
If you're further interested into the tool you might check the
shutter project website I
had one only problem after installing shutter to my computer. The
default installation of Shutter on Debian Testing/Unstable does try
to save the taken screenshots automatically to my main root "/",
and since I'm executing the program as a non-root user it failed to
save the screenshot picture.
To fix that I had to go to Shutter's:
Edit -> Preferences -> Directory
and change the default directory it's trying to save the taken
snapshots with shutter to my home directory.
3. Taking a screenshot on Linux terminal with scrot
There is a tiny little console probgram called
Scrot that
makes taking screenshots pretty easier.
I used to use this program quite a lot back in the day on my old
(overclocked Pentium 190 Mhz) machine and the good old Window
Maker.
Using scrot is quite easy. Let me give you a few examples
below.
The simplest way to use scrot on Linux to make a screenshot is via
simply executing scrot without arguments:
debian:~$ scrot
debian:~$
Executing this command will automatically create a screenshot of
your current screen in the directory from which scrot was invoked
and you will have a file in format like for instance
2010-11-09-185142_1024x768_scrot.png
debian:~$ scrot desktop.png -s
Another very handy way to use scrot is by invoking it to take a
picture after a specific interval of time. Let's say you want to
have a snapshot of a picture appearing in a video round about in
the 15 second of the video played.
To achieve issue:
debian:~$ scrot desktop.png -d 15 -c
This command will make scrot take a screenshot of your screen
present in 15 seconds of time.
Let's say you want to have a snapshot of a picture appearing in a
video round about in the 15 second of the video played.
Using this command and selecting a window or some rectangle element
present on the screen will make a screenshot of it.
There are plenty of other things you can do with scrot to make
wonders with screenshotting but for more please refer to the
proggie's manual.
4. Taking a Linux screenshot on KDE with ksnapshot
If you're a KDE Linux user maybe the
best choice for you would be
ksnapshot
Ksnapshot
has even a handbook you can check here if on kde's site
:)
5. Taking a Linux screenshot with The Gimp
Taking a screenshot using Gimp is quite easy to do:
All you need is start up
gimp and then go to:
File -> Create -> Screenshot
Gimp screenshot taking is quite advanced as well and supports the
following options:
5.1 Take a screenshot of a single window
5.2 Take a screenshot of the entire screen
5.3 Select a region to grab
5.4 Take a screenshot of screen after a delay
6. Taking a screenshot using imagemagick
This is another alternative way to scrot to take a screenshot but
you will need to have the imagemagick graphics manipulation package
installed on your GNU/Linux.
To take the screenshot with the import program part of the
imagemagick package do issue:
debian:~$ import -window root
screenshot.jpg
If you want to have a screenshot after a delay with the import
command execute:
debian:~$ import -pause 3 -window root
screenshot.jpg