Capture an image of the whole, or part of the screen.
Syntax
screencapture [options] [file]
Key
-c Force screen capture to go to the clipboard.
-C Capture the cursor as well as the screen. Only allowed in
non-interactive modes.
-i Capture screen interactively, by selection or window. The con-
trol key will cause the screen shot to go to the clipboard. The
space key will toggle between mouse selection and window selec-
tion modes. The escape key will cancel the interactive screen
shot.
-m Only capture the main monitor, undefined if -i is set.
-M Open the taken picture in a new Mail message.
-o In window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window.
-P Open the taken picture in a Preview window.
-s Only allow mouse selection mode.
-S In window capture mode, capture the screen instead of the window.
-t Image format to create, default is png (other options
include pdf, jpg, tiff and other formats).
-T Take the picture after a delay of , default is 5.
-w Only allow window selection mode.
-W Start interaction in window selection mode
-x Do not play sounds
file Where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen.
Examples
Take a screen shot of the DVD player (where the normal keyboard shortcuts won't work)
$ screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.png
The mouse will turn into crosshairs, hit the space bar for camera mode, now click the window the DVD is playing in.
A file called "dvd.png" will appear on your desktop.
To capture screen content while logged in via ssh, you must launch screencapture in the same mach bootstrap hierarchy as loginwindow:
PID=pid of loginwindow
sudo launchctl bsexec $PID screencapture [options]
“The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality” - Henri Cartier-Bresson
Related:
screencapture man page - Apple.com
sips - Scriptable image processing system
OS X Keyboard shortcuts
VLC will also allow screenshots of DVDs
