Capturing Stuff

I thought I would write a little bit about how I capture stuff using some features and software on my Mac.

I have found that one of the most effective ways to move text I want to save from one application to another is through the Services menu which you can always locate on the upper left of the header bar under the name of the application or the Finder.

For instance, if I find something that I want to save in Scrivener, I will highlight it in its original application and then scroll down under the Services menu till I find the Scrivener entry and then either create a new clipping or append it to an old clipping as you can see in the screen shot.

The Services approach saves the step of having to copy and paste.  You can also send things directly to Mail (if you use Apple Mail) or perform a variety of other tasks.

I already wrote and earlier post on another application called CopyPaste Pro that improves on the clipboard built into OSX.


What about screenshots or images?  I have never found Apple's keyboard shortcut of Command-Shift-4 to be particularly memorable.  It does let you select a segment of the desktop and save it to the desktop as a file.  Hitting the Shift key (after hitting Command-Shift-4) lets you save the whole open application window as an image to the desktop.

A better way is built into the Apple Utility called Grab (which you can find under the Applications/Utilities).  Grab allows you to make either a manual selection of an area, a window, or the whole screen.  You can also do timed grabs so that you can capture something that otherwise would not be visible unless you hover the mouse over it.  Grab is a great little built-in utility but it has its limitations.  For starters, to use what you've Grabbed, you have to save it as file somewhere (I save mine to the Desktop and then throw them away when I am done with them).  Files are saved as TIFF images which don't work for all applications.  They won't upload into Blogger as an example.  So to use the image, you have to open it in Preview and re-save it as a JPEG.  Easy enough to do but it adds steps.  The other problem with Grab is that you cannot adjust your grabbed image once you have released the button.  Okay, you could do it by cropping it in another application but that is another hassle.  Usually, I will just grab the original again until I get what I want.

I have found an even better application, called EasyCrop, to accomplish captures.  EasyCrop is pretty reasonable ($12) and is sold at the website of Yellow Mug.  EasyCrop has a lot of advantages over Grab.  It starts, like Grab, by allowing you to select either an area, a window, or the whole screen.  It also allows timed grabs.  If you already have an image file you can simply drag it into the left hand window to further manipulate it. But from this point forward, it has it all over Grab.  You can easily rotate your image, convert a color image to black and white, and constrain the captured image to a specific aspect ratio (such as 5 x 7).  EasyCrop then allows you to further refine your selection in the left hand screen and automatically import it into the right hand screen on the application. You can set the maximum size of the image file, sharpen the image, and set multiple file formats.  Best of all when you are done, you directly drag the right-hand image into anything that will accept it (such as mail or a document) without having to save it first!  Voila!  no multiple-step operations, no clutter, complete control.

If you don't want to spend the twelve bucks, Yellow Mug offers a more limited utility for free called SnapNDrag which does some, but not all, of what you can do in EasyCrop.  SnapNDrag is more like a slightly improved Grab.

One last simple way to grab an image on a webpage is to simply click and hold the mouse button over the image and drag it to the desktop.  This makes a copy of the original in whatever format the webpage used.  Handy but limited in some cases.

Got any other ways to do these tasks?  I would love to hear your comments.