12 December 2009 1 Comment

Taking Screenshots with Linux

When I am writing post for Make Tech Easier, I love to take plenty of screenshots as I feel they can make the explanation clearer and easier. Over the year, I have also discovered several ways to take screenshot on my Ubuntu machine. If you are looking for one, I have compiled a list of screen capture tools that you can use in Ubuntu.


Gnome-Screenshot [Ubuntu]

Gnome-screenshot is the default screen capture tool in Ubuntu. It is simple and easy to use. You can choose to capture the whole desktop or the current window and you are able to set a delay before activating the capture. It is useful for those who wanted a lightweight and minimal screen capture tool.

Gnome-screenshot can be accessed from Appications -> Accessories -> Take Screenshots.

Gnome Screenshot

Compiz [Ubuntu]

Compiz comes with a screenshot plugin that allows you to take screenshot quickly and easily. It consist of the bare minimum and few or none configuration options. You simply press the Windows button on your keyboard, left click your mouse and drag the cursor to cover the area you want to snap. That’s it. For those who want a quick snapshot of a specified region, Compiz is the best.

To activate the screenshot plugin, you will have to install CompizConfig Settings Manager and activate it from there.

Compiz Screenshot

GIMP

GIMP screenshot

GIMP has a screen capture function that can be found several levels down the menubar. One of the advantage of using GIMP is that you can immediately edit the screenshots and save it in the file format that you want it to be. In addition, this is the screen capture tool that I used everytime I wanted to take a snap of a window inside a virtual machine.

GIMP is useful if you want to take a comprehensive screenshot that you can edit immediately. If you just want a quick snapshot, I don’t think it is worth the trouble to load up GIMP, navigate several levels down the menubar before you can take a shot.

If you are using Gimp 2.6, the screen capture function can be found in File -> Create -> Screenshot

GIMP How to Take Screenshot

Gnome

If you use Gnome you can just press PrtSC (Print Screen) key, this will take a screen shot of the whole screen, you can only choose where to save the screenshot, the size will be the size of you screen, I mean the same resolution.

Others

  • Ksnapshot [KDE]
  • Webkut is an Adobe Air application meant for taking screenshot of Web page. It is like a browser where you can load up the webpage by entering the URL in the address bar and select the region to capture. [Web]
  • ScreenGrab is a Firefox extension that can capture the screenshot of any web page. [Web]

This post introduced how to take screenshot in command line – that’s geek :p. There were some very nice resize command introduced in the post and were very useful.

Reference:

1. http://tinyurl.com/ydujk4b

2. http://tinyurl.com/mxah4s

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