Take Screenshots on Your Mac, Minus the Drop Shadow

One of OS X 10.5 Leopard’s features that I have found counter-productive to my own preferences is that it includes a window’s drop shadow in screenshots taken with keyboard shortcuts. A little research reveals that you can exclude the drop shadow from screenshots by using Grab or Preview.

Take a Shadow-less Screenshot with Grab

1. Start the “Grab” application (CMD+Space and search for “Grab”).
2. Click Capture → Window.
3. Click Choose Window.
4. Click on the window you wish to capture.
5. Save the untitled screenshot.

Take a Shadow-less Screenshot with Preview

1. Start the “Preview” application (CMD+Space and search for “Preview”).
2. Click File → Grab → Window.
3. Click on the window you wish to capture.
4. The screenshot will automatically save to your desktop.

Both of these methods output TIFF files. Lifehacker reader evilrobot posted a terminal command that allows you to change Grab’s default file type, but I was unable to make this work on Leopard. Web developer and author Ryan Irelan wrote a script to take clean screen grabs, which outputs PNG by default and can be modified to work in other formats. Do any readers know any other methods of getting shadow-less PNG or JPG screenshots on Leopard without any additional software? It would be great to do so with keyboard shortcuts.