Taking screenshots is a good way to get your point across or show something to someone else. Some people download whole screenshot applications to do the job, but there’s a three key shortcut, shown in the image above! I use this technique myself to get all of the images you see in this blog.

To start the short-cut process, just press:

Cmd & Shift & 4

When you press these keys all at once, you don’t immediately get a screenshot. Your mouse pointer changes to a crosshair (+) and you need to click and drag the area you want to take a screenshot of:

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Tip
Make sure to hold the mouse button down while dragging out the area, otherwise it won’t work!

While you are dragging, you’ll notice the size of the screenshot appears next to the cursor at all times. This can be useful if you need to make the screenshot a particular size. It can even be useful as a quick and easy way of measuring things that are you on your screen (you can always delete the resulting screenshot!)

Once you let go of the mouse button, the screenshot is written to your desktop as a PNG file. This can be used directly on Web pages or sent via e-mail, or you can load it into Preview to convert it to other formats (such as JPEG or GIF).

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Tip
To cancel taking a screenshot, press escape while the crosshair cursor is visible

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