Ksnapshot Mini Howto for linux. (I am using ubuntu 7.10 and KDE)  :-)                                                                                 Back to Main Page

This is a very short version, and if you want to know more, go to the Internet etc.

This howto is without any guarantee, and you may use it on your own responsibility only.

There may be errors, but I do not want to use too much time to  write this minihowto.

To check specific words or items you may try to Search in:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/    or    http://www.google.com/

  

Index Of Page:

To make a screenshot of the whole screen

To save the screenshot

To take a screenshot of a part of the screen

To copy the screenshot to the Clipboard

To take a screenshot of a running video or webcam

Take a screenshot of a screenshot

Another simpler screenshot program called "Scrot"


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Ksnapshot is a program to take screenshots of: Your whole computer screen, or a part of the screen.

You can even take a screenshot of a running (or stopped) video -or a webcam screen (what you see is  what you get) - it can be text or images, anything you see.

It's is really very easy to use - open the program, click on the "New Snapshot"button and then you can save the screenshot, either as a "png" or as a "jpg" file.

If you want your screenshot file in another format, open it in e.g. Gimp, and then save it in another format.

It is most convenient to have the program icon on your panel (the grey bar at the bottom of your KDE desktop) - see below:



Right click in the light grey panel bar (see below):




Choose "Add application to panel" -> "Graphics" -> "Ksnapshot" - "Click" (see above), and then you get a small green icon     on your panel, ready to click on to

open the ksnapshot program (see above).


To make a screenshot of the whole screen we open ksnapshot (see below):



I have circled the most important buttons with black ellipses  (see above).                                                                                      Back to Index                                                                                                                                                                                       
First click on the black triangle button (see above) and select "Full Screen" capture mode - also select a "Snapshot delay" of e.g. "8" seconds (you can change

values by clicking on any of the 2 black triangles buttons  ) - see above.

Then to take a snapshot of the whole screen click on the "New Snapshot" button (see above) - the Ksnapshot dialog window disappears, and after 8 seconds

has passed, a snapshot is taken and the dialog window returns (when using Ksnapshot in a Firefox window, the Ksnapshot dialog windows does not disappear,

so you may move the dialog window out of the way, if it covers what you are going to take a screenshot of - probably a bug in the program).

In the upper left part of the Ksnapshot dialog window you can se a small image of the snapshot (see above).

In order to save the screenshot, click on the "Save As" button and a filemanager window opens, and you can select a directory for where to save

the screenshot, and a file name for the snapshot (see below) - in this case the screenshot is saved in the "/home/user1" directory and the name of the screenshot

file is "a_full_screen_snapshot.jpg" - it is important to give the filename a ".jpg" extension, to get it saved in the "jpg" format - then click the "Save" button (see

below):




To take a screenshot of a part of the screen, you have to choose a capture mode called "Region" (see below):                Back to Index



You change the Capture mode to "Region" by clicking on the black triangle icon and then choose "Region" (see above).

When you click on the "New Snapshot" button, the Ksnapshot dialog disappears, and you can draw a square around the area you want to capture with the

left mouse cursor.

When you release the mouse button the dialog returns, and you can Save the screenshot by clicking on the "Save As" button and then

follow the  same procedure as above, for taking a full screen screenshot.

You can click on the "Help" button to get help (see above).                                                                                                                Back to Index

You can also copy the screenshot to the Clipboard by clicking on the "Copy to Clipboard" button (see above).

You can even print the screenshot by  clicking on the "Print" button  (see above).

When you have taken a screenshot and saved it into a file, you can open the file in the Gimp image editor, and then edit it (select a part of the screenshot image,

and save it as another image etc.

To take a screenshot of a running video or webcam screen, just open Ksnapshot, and take a full screen screenshot, save it into a file, and then open it in

Gimp, select the video part of the screenshot, copy it into an empty image, and then save it.

You can also click on a screenshot file to open it automatic, then take a screenshot of the screenshot and then save the new screenshot in its own file.

There is another simpler screenshot program called "Scrot" (I use it sometimes) which is to be run from a shell command line - see "man scrot".

It can be installed by using the "Synaptic" packet manager.

Below are the two commands I most often use:

"scrot -d 7"   (When you click enter, a full screen screenshot of the active screen is taken after 7 seconds  and a file is automatic generated in the default user

folder (/home/user1).

The filename will look something like "2007-11-21-192508_486x386_scrot.png".

or

"scrot -d 7 -s" (When you click "Enter", you can draw a square with the left mouse cursor, and when you release the mouse, a screenshot of the selected area is

taken after 7 seconds, and a file is automatic created in the same way as mentioned above).

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11/2007