Screen Shots come as PNG

I'm used to taking screen shots - either as ComShift3 or with Grab.
With ComShift3 you get a PDF
But now I'm getting PNG files instead.
I've looked at System Prefs/Keyboard shortcuts and "Reset to Default" etc but can find no way to return to PDFs
Any suggestions welcome
iMac G5 (version A Jan 05) Mac OS X (10.3.9)

WestwindG,
OnyX Appearance Menu has the capability to change the Screen Capture save default.
;~)

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Imported Screen Shots are Blurry

Hello FCP users,
I am challenged and need some guidance. The projects that I create a little mini-movies/demos made up of mostly imported screen shots and some still photos -- never any video. My challenge is that I have a very clean screen shot to work with -- if I bring them up in Preview, Photoshop, etc. they look great. The second I import them into FCP they are blurry, degraded and next to unreadable. I seems like I've tried everything, but nothing seems to make a difference.
I am not the one taking the screen shots -- they are provided from a different source each time. Each person most likely uses a different product to grab those screen shots, but my guess is that they are probably using snag-it or a similar product. I usually ask them to provide the "best" quality they can. That can mean a ton of different sized screen shots come my way. The ones I'm working with now range in size -- 1,116x760, 1,284x1000, 1,026x813, 1,023x830 to name a few.
I have been on the boards and did try one recommendation that I saw to reduce the size of the image to the same frame size that you are working with (in my case 720x480). Of course, when I do this there is degradation before I even bring it into FCP.
So, I'm wondering, should I be asking people to create their screen shots at 720x480? I've been playing around in Parallels with Snag-it to see what options are available -- I don't see that they can choose to produce the screen shots at a certain size -- they can reduce them after they take it, but there's that degradation again. Maybe there is some recommended product that I can suggest? Everyone I work with to supply the screen shots would be a pc user.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I do these often, and my screen quality always looks poor. I'd like to come up with a solution and I'm sure a big part of that is instructing those who supply the screen shots to take them a certain way...perhaps with a certain product...only I don't know what that is.
Best practices anyone?
My settings are:
Frame Size: 720x480
Aspect Ratio: NTSC DV (3:2)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: NTSC - CCIR 601 / DV (720x480)
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC
Thanks for your insights.
Tawny

Pan & Scan: in this context, I was referring to the idea of panning across a screen shot instead of reducing it to the size of the video frame. In other words, the original is (e.g.) 2x the width or height and then, as you explain / narrate, it moves across the screen. This preserves the "local" resolution of the original, but doesn't give the viewer a single view of the whole screen. It can be used in conjunction with the "whole view" as a kind of CU shot.

How may I make my screen shots default to a .jpg instead of .png

How may I make my screen shots default to a .jpg instead of .png?
Is there a preference somewhere?

One easy way is:
Changing the File Format
In order to change the file format you must firstly open up a Terminal window (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), and type the following.
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type TYPE
For the command to work, you need to replace “TYPE” with a valid file format, the available options are:
png (default)
pdf
jpg
jp[2 (jpeg 2000)
gif
tiff
bmp
pict
tga
Once you have selected your format simply issues the command, placing the file format in it’s space. For example for a JPG, I would issue:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

Screen shots not seen by Windows user. How come?

When I create a screen shot on my MacBook, and send it to someone using Windows, it appears to them as a blank square. Anyone know why?

Open the Screen Shot (png) with Preview. File > Export… Select JPEG, Best, and give it a shorter, more user friendly name. Save it to your Desktop where you can easily find it.
You do not need some third-party software reference when the tools to do the job are included with OS X.

HT1386 How to take screen shot in 4s , help says hold the home+wake up key but Shen I press Siri comes up

How to take screen shot in 4s , help says hold the home+wake up key but Shen I press Siri comes up

Hold the on/off and home buttons for about 1 second, then release simultaneously.

How do I take screen shot with preview if when I click preview iCloud comes up?

I recently updated iCloud. Now when I open preview to take a screen shot of a page that I am working on iclid comes up and obstructs the page. How do I get back to the screen that I want a scene shot of?

As with the previous iOS versions.
Press and hold the Home button and use the on/off or sleep/wake button as a camera shutter button for the screen shot.
Or while pressing and holding the on/off or sleep/wake button before the slide to power of appears, use the Home button as a camera shutter button - this must be done before the slide to power off appears.

Corrupt Screen Shots (png and tif)

Hi
I and a few screen shots which I took some months back using the 'shift-command-3' key combination. They were saved in .png and .tif formats.
I opened them today to find that the .png ones were all black (i.e., corrupted) and the .tifs appeared in negative 'white and black' images rather than colour.
Any idea what's gone wrong here? Or how to recover the images?

The easiest way to change the format is to download the free app OnyX. In OnyX go to Parameters/General and change the screen shot format to jpg. From that point forward the screen shots you take with those keyboard commands will be jpgs.
http://www.titanium.free.fr/download.php?sid=b7bf7f330825adff63b3dbf74eaa4b55

I uninstalled and reinstalled but at the end of installation there were erros. See attached screen shot. I now cannot open the application. error code 10810 comes up when I try to open.

I could not update photoshop CS6 and Jeff from forum advised unistalling and reinstalling (Tk93580659). Mac OSX. In real trouble, as suggested I uninstalled and reinstalled but at the end of installation there were errors. See attached screen shot. Now I cannot open the application. Error code 10810 comes up when I try to open (see 2nd screenshot). Please help. I have now lost photoshop altogether whereas previous at least I still could use it but could not update. Thank you for any help to instal successfully. Dr Koh

Still looking for a solution to specific installation errors (see screeshot) referring to "Language Pack installation failure":
ERROR: DW050: The following payload errors were found during install:
ERROR: DW050: - Adobe Photoshop CS6 Core: Failed due to Language Pack installation failure
ERROR: DW050: - Adobe Photoshop CS6 International English Language Pack_AdobePhotoshop13-en_GB: Install failed
Unfortunately previous advice of using CCS cleaner tool, and suggestions from links for 1) "exit code 6 and 7" and 2) "Troubleshoot instal logs" did not work at all. So I am desparate to fix this because I have spent a lot of money purchasing Photoshop CS6 but have no functioning program. Surely Adobe can help solve this problem with installing, or else it means a lot of money spent on Photoshop CS6 for nothing. I am appealing directly to Adobe to help because I have come to the end of my options. I thank the forum for their suggestions but so far the solution for this specific "Language Pack installation failure" problem is missing. Thank you.
Dr Koh

Best practices for importing .png screen shots into FrameMaker 9?

I'm new to importing .png screen shots into FrameMaker, and also new to FrameMaker 9. To compound things, I have engineers giving me screen shots taken on Linux machines, using a client like NX to get to Linux. My screen shots are coming in fuzzy and instead of trying to troubleshoot what's going wrong here, I was wondering if someone could quickly tell me what normally works with FrameMaker 9 and .png on a Windows system so I can troubleshoot from there.
That is, let's say I'm capturing a screen shot on a Windows system and I use some tool (Paint Shop Pro X, SnagIt, Alt-PrintScreen, or whatever). I save the screen shot as .png and then import by reference into FrameMaker 9.
What dpi do I use in the capturing program?
What dpi do I use when I import by reference into FM?
What if that makes the screen shot too large/too small: Is it better to use the FrameMaker Graphics > Scale solution, to resize it in my capture program, or to retake the screen shot?

Bringing screenshots into Frame documents has four major considerations:
how to perform the original screen capture
how to post-process it in a graphics editor
what graphical object model (and file format) to store it in
making sure it isn't damaged by your workflow
1. Screen Cap, typically of dialog boxes ...
... used to be simple; isn't anymore.
Dialogs used to have identical pixel dimensions on all user screens. You hit Alt[PrntScrn] in Windows and you got a one pixel per pixel 24-bit color image on the clipboard.
More recent operating systems now have much more scalability in the GUI. So either capture at what the default user sees, or at the optimal presentation enlargement, which might be precisely 2x the default display.
2. Post
Before you even start this step, you need to know exactly how you will be presenting the final document out of Frame:
B&W? Color?
What dimensional size on the page?
If hardcopy, what are the optimal parameters of graphical images for your print process? If web or PDF, various other considerations arise. I'll presume print.
In our workflow, the print engine is 600 dpi bitmap. We normally present images at one column width, about 3.5in. Our PDF workflow passes 600 bitmap untouched, but resamples gray and color to 200 dpi. I tend to use 600 dithered bitmap, but always test if there's any doubt.
Chances are the screencap bitmap, at your native printing res, is too small. There is no "dpi" associated with clipboard images. Once pasted into an image editor, the editor should provide the ability to declare the dpi (Photoshop does, both at paste, and via "resize without rescale"). If your image editor doesn't, fire it. If you can't see and control dpi, you have no real control over this workflow.
Plan to save the final image in a format that at least supports linear dimensions (like EPS) if not explicit dpi (TIFF). Save out the image at the exact size you intend to use at import in Frame. Do you know how Frame scales objects? I don't. So do your scaling where you have control over how.
Play with the defined "dpi" until the linear dimensions match your planned import frame. If that dpi passes through your workflow unmolested, you may not need to perform any resizing.
If you need to convert from 24-bit color to bitmap (at your printing resolution), I'd suggest using error diffused dithering converting to your target res, as this tends to preserve the hard edges in dialog boxes and rasterized text.
If you need to re-scale, I'd suggest scaling up by an integer multiple, using "nearest neighbor", to the nearest size just higher than your target dpi. Then rescale bi-linear down to your target size.
3. File Format
The main consideration here is compression, followed by color depth and size encoding.
Screenshots tend to have expanses of flat colors, and hard edges. These objects compress reasonably well using repeat-count compressions (like ZIP or RLE). They tend to get damaged by curve-matching compression, like JPEG, because they typically contain no curves through color space. Hard edges get fuzzy or pick up ringing artifacts.
So don't use JPEG (and what compression will your workflow use?). I tend to use TIFF(ZIP) for screenshots.
Avoid indexed color (4-bit, 8-bit or 15/16-bit) color.
Don't use GIF. It has no size encoding. The usual presumption is that GIF is 72 dpi, which makes importing it a nuisance, and at least a minor math exercise. Plus, it's indexed color, and may scale poorly downstream.
Experiment. See what looks optimal in the final product.
4. Workflow
As you can see throughout the above, all your careful planning can be for nought it your save-as-PDF, distiller or print shop process resamples everything down to 90 dpi. You have to know what's happening, and how to optimize for it, or you probably won't like the result.
We once had graphics showing up at 10 (yes ten) dpi in print.
Turned out the print engine could handle JPEG 5 but not JPEG 2000.
We had to hastily back-port images until a software upgrade fixed it.

IPhone Coma Mode - the all input results in screen shot photos

Since 3.1 my iPhone 3G goes into a 'locked' mode where it ignores all input
If I call it - nothing happens, if I try trace it with FindMyPhone - it's reported as being off the air
If I leave the phone for about 15-20 mins then all is fine again. Otherwise a hard-reset is required
Whats strangest is that often when it's coming round from this mode, if I press the main button on the phone it takes screen shots as if they are photos - complete with photo sound. So far, I have found no way around this other than a hard-reset or again, leave the phone for 10+ minutes

Whichever button you see as the 'main' button then the other one sounds like it's sticking and eventually (after 10+ minutes) is freeing up enough to break contact again!
I suggest this is the problem because if you press and release both buttons quickly then you end up taking a screen-shot as part of normal operation. The fact that you only need to press one button to get a screen-shot might be a clue?
Check that both buttons are clean, not obstructed by any case and free to move normally and you may be lucky!

Help Please! Serious Issues with Placing Screen Shots.

Hi,
I'm a long time browser of these forums but this is my first post. I'm pulling my hair out. I've spent hours on this and have a looming deadline. I've a lot of experience in PS and AI but have only started using ID recently. I've searched the forums and web in general, I've found people with similar or the same problems (both on Mac and Windows) but can't find a solution anywhere. I really think there's got to be a simple solution but I can't figure it out.
I'm using ID CS6 on Mac OS X 10.7.5
I've created several mutilpage PDFs (not for print, for screen viewing) in ID using vector graphics from AI without any issue. However, this time I'm trying to create a multipage PDF that will be a tutorial for GarageBand that requires dozens of edited screen shots. When I place the cropped screen shots they come into ID really badly pixelated. I've tried bring them in as several different file types, PNG, BMP, TIFF, JPEG, but all with the same result. I've tried scaling them in different ways and exporting the PDF in different ways but the screen shots still look terrible.
I have the document set up for digital publishing and it's A4 Landscape. I've changed the display performance to High Quality Display but this shouldn't really matter because the exported PDF still has horrible looking screen shots.
Sadly...when I bring the same screen shots into Microsoft Word Mac they look absolutely perfect. I really, REALLY don't want to be forced to use Word to create a tutorial, or anything for that matter.
Can anybody help? Please!
Thanks in advance.
Colm

It seems ludacris and defeats the purpose of the software for me since I hoped to use it mainly for tutorials containing screenshots.
The user interface you are capturing is designed to the monitor pixel grid and captures degrade if you sample them up or down. You can see the resampling problem if you use OSX's zoom feature–zoom in and the interface get's larger but it also blurs.
And extreme example would be a checkerboard drawn at 10 pixels per inch. Increasing the resolution to 300ppi doesn't add any information and degrades the checkerboard's appearance:
When you place a screen capture in ID and scale it, there's no resampling—the capture is resized and the pixels are scaled larger or smaller. If you print the capture it will look fine because a hi-res printer can accurately draw the different scaled resolutions.
When you export to PDF there's going to be a problem displaying the captures in Acrobat because there would only be one zoom level where the original interface pixels display unchanged. It's similar to Photoshop where the screen capture looks best at 100% where the image to monitor ratio is 1:1, but in Acrobat the 1:1 ratio might be any zoom percentage depending on how the capture was resized in ID.

Change date/time format in Screen Shot file name?

I capture Screen Shots all day long. But when I go to look for the one I just took, it's not always at the bottom of the list. That's because Mac names them as e.g.
Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 1.19.04 PM.png (and the order gets screwed up).
Can I change to make save as e.g.
Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 13.19.04.png (this way they'll always stay in order).
Thanks for any help.

You may have to change system time format globally. Is it worth ?
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14227
Best.

Change Default Screen Capture Format from PNG to JPG

I'm running Mac OS 10.4.8 on a G5 Duo Core (Power PC). Up until about 10.4.1, my screen captures (Apple-Shift-4) would result in a PDF file. Then they started coming out as PNG files. I would strongly prefer that they default to jpg files, since I typically change the PNG files to JPG.
Can anyone tell me how to change the default for screen captures from PNG format to jpg format?
I have tried to use the process described at http://textsnippets.com/posts/show/131 but this does not change the default format for screen captures. I've also discussed this issue with Apple online help, but they were not able to change the default format either.
Any suggestions?

Download and use Screenshots Preference Pane:
http://www.ego-systems.com/Products/screenshotsprefpane.html
It's free and easy, gives you about a dozen options on how to save the shot and allows you to change where it's saved to.
I also use Capture Me:
http://www.chimoosoft.com/captureme.html
Best screen capture utility I've tried, you can save each screen shot in any format you want or have it go. It also works as a great picture sticky because the windows floats above other windows. It's also free,
Kevin
http://www.bearbyte.blogspot.com/

Screen Shot appears as Link when sent to someone (...

Hello -
Just updated to 7.0 (653). When I send a screen shot (png) via Skype, it appears as a link stating:
"to view this shared photo, goto: xxx/xxx/xxxxx/asdfjewn78034h".
What is the reason otheres are having this issue? I can accept and see thier PNG files from thier older version of Skype. I can not locate any information in prefernces, via help, support, or community.
Thank you -
Attachments:
Screen Shot 2014-10-13 at 4.37.14 PM.png ‏30 KB

Well it appears to be an new versions vs old. I am now using CloudApp until everyone else in the world upgrades to ver7 (https://www.getcloudapp.com/download/mac/)

Need Help with inserting a screen shot

Can someone pleassse help me?! If any of you are familiar with popular youtubers and how in their videos they include screen shots of facebook or twitter questions and they have them so they roll across the bottom of the screen, can you please help me! If anyone knows how to do this in Imovie 11 it would be HUGELY appreciated! Because when i try the picture in picture settings it zooms the screen shot so its massive and its also not an oblong shape anymore (like the shape of a facebook reply) i also need help at how this would transition to roll in from one side of the screen to the other?!
PLEASE HELP ME!!

I think it is possible to do this in iMovie, although perhaps easier in Final Cut Pro X, which I would guess that iJustine is using.
First, I would take a still image of my video at the points where I want to superimpose a graphic. Since she is mostly superimposing graphics on her talking head, a single still might be sufficient.
For getting a still out of iMovie, see my User Tip here.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3231
Now, you will want to take this still to a photo editor that allows you to edit layers. Use PhotoShop if you have it. If you do not already have PhotoShop, it can be rather expensive, so I would suggest a tool like Acorn or Pixelmator, which I think are available in the Mac App Store.
Create a project in the dimensions of your iMovie still, e.g. 1920x1080.
You would put the still on the bottom layer, so you know where to put yoru graphics. You would position the graphic or screen grab at the next layer up. Now I would export the upper layer only as a PNG file. The PNG file has an Alpha Channel, which means you will see only the graphic and not the still in the background.
The main thing Final Cut Pro would give you would be the easy ability to have multiple graphics on the screen at the same time.
Now you can drag this PNG file into iMovie and drop it on the project clip where you want it to appear. A popup menu will appear. Choose Cutaway.
There are probably other ways to do this, but that is the way I would do it.

Screen Shots come as PNG

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