[Macworld]

Post your comments for Disable shadows in 10.5 window screen captures here

[Photonerd]

Great tip. Please, more of this stuff, less hardware review fluff for non-Apple product, and build a separate sub-site for all things iPhone IMO. ;)

[adobephile]

Photonerd said:

Great tip. Please, more of this stuff, less hardware review fluff for non-Apple product, and build a separate sub-site for all things iPhone IMO. ;)

I don't know whether there is a sub-site for all things iPhone, but I don't want iPhone news separate from Mac news. To me, they're quite connected and not just because I'm a user of both.

To me, the iPhone is yet another outgrowth of Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy which they've been working on for many years now. iPhone coverage does not detract from nor dilute the importance of the Mac platform. It EXTENDS it and makes it more relevant to both owners and potential switchers.

The iPhone and iPod and other Apple marketing stategies are essentially Trojan Horses into the MS hegemony, and it's very gratifying to me to get news of both iPod and iPhone sales as well as the numbers of Mac switchers as probable results of these "peripheral" exposures to Apple products.

[Chris Breen]

This is a discussion better carried on in the Website Feedback area. Please, let's keep the comments here on topic.

[jpmm]

Great tip. There's been a few times when I didn't want the shadow, and this is a great way to take care of that!
Thanks.

[leicaman]

I've been inspired to write an Applescript based on this. I'm sure others could write cleaner scripts, but heck, I'm an amateur, so sue me!

I put it in QuicKeys and tied it to Command Option F16 and now I can do screen captures as either jpg, png or pdf with or without shadows at the press of a button. I wrote it in Script Debugger, but paste it into Script Editor (or QuicKeys) and enjoy!

Past all text below this line:

(*

Applescript written by Eric Welch © 2008 (just kidding) to automate capturing sceenshots using Terminal commands with the camera tool. Choose the extension you want to determine the format of the final capture. Do NOT type in the extension when naming the capture.

*)

set selectedButton to button returned of (display dialog ¬
"Would you like your screen capture to have a shadow?" buttons {"Shadow", "No Shadow", "Cancel"} default button "Shadow")

--you could set tiff by changing one to tiff - this dialog only allows three buttons
set fileExtension to button returned of (display dialog ¬
"What format?" buttons {"jpg", "png", "pdf"} default button "jpg")

set fileBody to the text returned of (display dialog ¬
"What would you like to name the screen capture? (Don't include extension!) ¬
of the screen capture?" default answer "capture" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK") as text

set fileName to fileBody & "." & fileExtension

if selectedButton = "Shadow" then
set captureTheScreen to "screencapture -iw " & "-t" & fileExtension & " ~/desktop/" & fileName
else
set captureTheScreen to "screencapture -iwo " & "-t" & fileExtension & " ~/desktop/" & fileName
end if

do shell script captureTheScreen

Message was edited by: leicaman

[jpmm]

leicaman said:

I've been inspired to write an Applescript based on this. I'm sure others could write cleaner scripts, but heck, I'm an amateur, so sue me!

Thanks. I'll give that a try. Oh, by the way, I think you meant to write Sosumi. Haha, j/k.


(Sosumi, the Apple sound - for those who may read that and not understand my sick humor)

[Sam]

I have used the great freeware "Shadowkiller" by Unsanity software for some time now, and it provides the functionality of Mr Griffiths' tip without having to access terminal:
http://www.unsanity....es/shadowkiller
Hope this helps.
Sam

[leicaman]

Sosumi! Touche.

[jpmm]

Sam said:

I have used the great freeware "Shadowkiller" by Unsanity software for some time now, and it provides the functionality of Mr Griffiths' tip without having to access terminal:

http://www.unsanity....es/shadowkiller

Sam, I should point out that the Web site says "ShadowKiller currently does not work on Mac OS X 10.5.", unless they have an update somewhere.

[Sam]

jpmm:

I realize that the Unsanity site states "ShadowKiller" does not work on Mac OS 10.5, but I can verify that it definitely does work (at least for me) since I use it regularly. (I currently run OS 10.5.4)

Sam

[rcgordon]

I'm seeing that this feature works in Tiger (10.4.11 at least) as well.

[DavidWolfe]

This is a great tip--one that I have been looking for ever since I began using Leopard. I, too, usually do need drop shadows present on screen captures. The problem is that, on my system, the Leopard drop shadows are enormous. In fact, the shadows on my system are probably between 10 and 20 times bigger than the one in your example screen capture. I wonder why? If I could get the size down to something reasonable, I could use the shadows that are part of the screen capture. As it is, I have to remove them and add them back in.