Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Name

screencapture

Synopsis

screencapture [-i [-s | -w | -W] | -m] [-x] { -c | pathname ...}

Saves the contents of the screen to a PDF file or to the Clipboard. Unless using the -i option to start an interactive screen capture, the contents of the entire display are captured.

Options

-c

Save screenshot to the Clipboard for later pasting.

-C

Capture the cursor, too.

-i

Initiate interactive screen capture. The mouse is used to select a region of the screen to capture. Pressing the spacebar toggles between this mouse selection mode and a window selection mode, in which clicking on a window captures the portion of the screen taken up by that window. Pressing the Control key saves the screenshot to the Clipboard. Pressing the Escape key cancels the interactive screen capture.

-m

Capture only the main display, if multiple displays are in use.

-s

Disable window selection mode in an interactive screen capture; only mouse selection is allowed.

-S

Capture the screen, not the window, even in window capture mode.

-w

Disable mouse selection mode in an interactive screen capture; only window selection is allowed.

-W

Start an interactive screen capture in window selection mode instead of mouse selection mode.

-x

Disable sound effects.

pathname

The name of a file in which to save the screenshot. You should terminate the filename with a .pdf extension.