If you’ve ever needed to take a screenshot when using Mac OS X, you’ve probably figured out the Command-Option-3 keystroke combination needed to do this. In 10.4 “Tiger”, the file that is created is a PNG file. I recently discovered that if you want it to be some other file type, say a JPG file or a PDF file you can do that. There are two ways.

Way #1: In the Terminal.app, type the following command, replacing the words “image_format” with the file type you want to use:

sudo defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format

It may be necessary to either restart your computer or to issue the following command as well:

sudo killall SystemUIServer

Way #2: Download the freeware utility savescreenie by clicking here.

Now you know. Don’t you feel better?

–Pete