The best screenshot tool for Linux

published Nov 14, 2009 11:03   by admin ( last modified Nov 14, 2009 11:03 )

 

Summary: I finally found one on Linux that met my needs: It is called Shutter

 

Update info 2009-11-21:

Switching recommendations from Imagemagick to Shutter, due to Imagemagick's inability to take screen shots of programs such as Firefox and OpenOffice.

What is the best screenshot tool for Linux of course depends on your particular needs.

My basic needs are the following:

  • Take only a portion of the screen that I define when taking the shot
  • One click operation
  • Save as a unique file name automatically so I never lose shots. Great for quickly making a series of shots for documentation.

And as an extra:

  • Automatically upload to my blog and prime the Clipboard with html to paste, alternatively open a page in a gallery where I can copy and paste the picture URL.

On Windows I use MWSnap, which fits the basic needs except for the one click operation. However it does remember the region-or-window setting and atomatically saves the file under a unique file name.

On Linux, the obvious choices did not meet my specifications: KSnapshot is a five-click operation or so, and so is "Take Screenshot (gnome-panel-screenshot)" in Gnome, and Gimp. The setting for region/window/screen selection is not sticky( except for Gimp), and you have to manually supply a file name for all them.

Today I finally found one on Linux that met my needs, Shutter. The trick is to make a customized application launcher for it with the switch "--selection". In this way Shutter starts and immediately hides itself and shows crosshairs for selecting the part of the visible screen you want to take a screen shot from. It can be configured to automatically save the screenshots in a folder of your choice, under a file name with your choice of date, time and other info embedded in the file name.

It can also automatically upload the resulting image to an ftp server.

There is an Imagemagick solution that came close to satisfying my needs, and below is the text I wrote before I realized it cannot handle Firefox and Openoffice, at least not on my stock Ubuntu 9.10.

The Imagemagick solution is the one click solution near the end of this page: How to Take a Screenshot in Linux (Ubuntu) |
It is actually a shell script that captures a region of the screen, automatically saves it and with a slight modification, opens the image in a viewer (or any program of your choice).

After the last line of the shell script that you can find from the link above:

import $file;

add:

eog $file;

The author has written one more page on the subject using Gnome Screenshot instead of ImageMagick, in order to easily get delayed shots:

The shell script for taking one-click screenshots is below. Copy and paste it into your favorite text editor and save it somewhere in your home directory as screenshot-import.sh. Then run the following command on it in the terminal to make it executable: chmod +x screenshot-import.sh.

How to Take a Screenshot in Linux (GNOME) Revisited | Webmaster Tips

That solution can however not be scripted to only capture a part of the screen.