10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures

More Mac Sites:
Macworld
MacUser
iPhone Central

Pick of the Week - Nov 10 [Show all picks]
Path Finder 5 - A feature-laden Finder replacement

12,000 hints and counting!

Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: atverd

Leopard has a new unwelcome (to me, at least) feature -- a shadow around whole-window screenshots (ie, Command-Shift-4, Space). Fortunately this can be disabled from Terminal with this command:


defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

To make the changes take effect, logout and login, or restart SystemUIServer.

[robg adds: This works, and I activated it with killall SystemUIServer in Terminal. To add the shadow effect back in, delete the newly-added pref: defaults delete com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow, then restart SystemUIServer again.]

•

Currently 0.00 / 5
1
2
3
4
5

(0 votes cast)

[18,370 views]

Hint Options

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures | 14 comments | Create New Account

Click here to return to the '10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures' hint

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: backwardm on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 8:02AM PDT

Thank you so much for this hint. How these snippets are discovered is beyond me, but I have always thought the shadow in the snapshots were too much, and wished for some way to remove them (beyond a few minutes in Photoshop for each snap) Thanks for the hint.

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: Fairly on Fri, Jul 4 2008 at 12:22AM PDT

Ditto. This is a fiver all the way. As to how these things are discovered: people check for strings in the binaries. Good work and thank you!

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: Coumerelli on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 8:13AM PDT

Is there an extra space in the hinted code? Between the words "write" and "com?" I took it out when I ran the hint in terminal.

---
"The best way to accelerate a PC is 9.8 m/s2"

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: robg on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 8:25AM PDT

There was (I removed it), but it shouldn't matter...

-rob.

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: DougAdams on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 8:45AM PDT

Also, you may want to roll yer own. Have a look at the man page for screencapture in Terminal. Specifically, the -o flag: "In window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window."

---
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
dougscripts.com

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: r0n on Tue, Jul 1 2008 at 3:02AM PDT

Best part of the man page is in the "Bugs" section:
"Better documentation is needed for this utility."

;)

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: mm2270 on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 9:00AM PDT

Fantastic hint. Thanks for letting us know about this. I never could stand the shadows in the screen captures. Especially since Leopard's window shadows are much wider than they were in Tiger.

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: chrischram on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 11:34AM PDT

Great hint! Thanks.

One comment: After I killed SystemUIServer my virtual memory usage went through the ceiling and my system speed went down the crapper. I think a simple Restart would be a safer choice.

Use grab for temporary capturing without the shadow
Authored by: lowbatteries on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 2:18PM PDT

For those of you looking to do this on a one-time basis, you can use Grab (in /Applications/Utilities) - it doesn't capture the shadow.

Use grab for temporary capturing without the shadow
Authored by: wjv on Thu, Aug 14 2008 at 12:26AM PDT

Grabbing with Preview (File -> Grab -> Window) also doesn't capture the shadow, for what it's worth.

It's actually good to know you can do it both ways, since sometimes you do want that shadow�

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: fursonice on Mon, Jun 30 2008 at 10:40PM PDT

excuse me for butting in here... but is there a way capture menu windows with the 'title"... like File or Edit, etc.?

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: maaac on Tue, Jul 1 2008 at 11:20AM PDT

Great hint, thank you.

Although with a minor/negligible complaint: If you're capturing the Dock (Command-Shift-4, Space) the resulting image is extremely stretched (dimensions of the screens resolution minus the menubar).

Hopefully this is the only oddness.

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: MrsMiniver on Tue, Jul 1 2008 at 2:43PM PDT

Thank you! I do quite a few screenshots to use on my web site, and this is always an annoyance. You can also restart the SystemUIServer from Activity Monitor: show all processes, select it, Force Quit, it should immediately restart.
Mrs. Miniver

10.5: Disable shadow in screen window captures
Authored by: pmbuko on Tue, Jul 29 2008 at 3:16PM PDT

Using this hint as a starting point, I wrote a little bash script that lets you type "shotshadows off" and "shotshadows on" in the terminal to control your screenshot shadows. It's available here:

http://yourmacguy.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/screenshot-shadows/

Search

From our Sponsor...

User Functions

Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User
Lost your password?

What's New:

Hints

3 new Hints in the last 24 hours

Comments last 2 days

Links last 2 weeks

No recent new links

What's New in the Forums?

The Editor's Corner...

Here are some of my (robg) other projects...

•	The Robservatory My blog - Macs, tech, etc.
•	Mac OS X Power Hound The best of Hints in print
•	Inside iWork An iWork training DVD
•	Macworld Column, features, online...

Hints by Topic

News from Macworld

The macosxhints Poll

iPad_poll_#1

Other polls | 7,021 votes | 76 comments

Visit other IDG sites: