Screen Shot broken in Lion??

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Level 1

140 points

Screen Shot broken in Lion??

SUMMARY:

Still fairly new to Lion (7.2), but just came across a major behavior difference vs. Snow Leopard, and hoping someone can tell me if it's a bug or a "feature":

I can't get Lion to take a partial screenshot when the display image has been magnified (using the "Opt-Cmd =" zoom function), something which worked perfectly well in Snow Leopard.

DETAILS

In SL, I could zoom in on my screen, position the now magnified image anywhere I chose, then press Cmd-Shift-4 (to bring up the crosshair pointer), drag-select whatever portion of the magnified (but now static) screen image I wanted, let go of the mouse button, and get a screenshot of just that selected area.

[This is different than simply doing a Cmd-Shift-4 screenshot of a selected portion of the non-zoomed screen, since the scenario I'm describing instantly gives me a much larger image (up to virtually the entire 1920x1080 pixels on my external display) of the magnified, and therefore screen-smoothed portion I'm capturing -- much quicker for my run-and-gun purposes than having to open each and every regular screenshot in an image-editor and upscaling.]

But in Lion, I can't seem to do the same partial screenshot of a screen which has been zoomed in on -- I just get a full-screen shot exactly as if I'd simply pressed Cmd-Shift-3 while displaying the regular, non-magnified image.

I can still do the regular Cmd-Shift-4 screenshot of just a selected area of the screen at regular magnification of course, but as I explained above that's not the same as being able to capture a screen shot of a selected area of a zoomed-in, magnified image.

This was easy to do in Snow Leopard -- so long as your selection area was at least one pixel in from the display's outside edges, SL let you use Cmd-Shift-4 to grab a shot of whatever area of the screen you'd selected, regardless of whether that area was part of a magnified screen image or not.

Any theories on why Lion seems crippled in this regard?

Thanks,

John B.

Toronto

MacBook Pro (early 2011)-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 13" 2.3GHz i5 8GB RAM, 500GB HD

Posted on Jan 25, 2012 3:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Don Archibald

Level 10

101,623 points

Jan 25, 2012 10:53 PM in response to John Bertram

Can't explain why it won't work the same way as it did in Leopard.

I tried what you described, and Command-Shift-4 worked fine - except that the resulting screenshot image was normal view, not enlarged. I suspect that was because everything was enlarged, including the capture mechanism, on a pixel-to-pixel basis.

However, for stuff displayed in Safari there is a workable way. If you are using a Magic Mouse or Trackpad, a gentle double-tap of one finger will enlarge the contents of the Safari window. YOu can then use Command-Shift-4 to take a screenshot of an area of the enlarged window contents, and the resulting screenshot will display an enlarged image.

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Answer 2

John Bertram Author

Level 1

140 points

Jan 26, 2012 8:39 AM in response to Don Archibald

Also works in FireFox, BTW -- and I presume in Chrome as well -- both of which I've been testing lately after growing frustrations with Safari (to which I'll probably return once I get frustrated enough with FF and GC!).

But yes -- definitely should have thought of that one. Was probably too fixated on why Snow Leopeard and Lion behaved differently in this specific area (doing a partial screen shot of a magnified imaged). Still curious as to why that might be -- I've noticed other Lion threads referencing issues with the Zoom function in 10.7.x, and wonder if there's a connection? -- but until that gets resolved, your suggestion looks like the logical workaround/alternative for now.

Many thanks for the post.

John B.

Toronto

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Answer 3

John Bertram Author

Level 1

140 points

Jan 26, 2012 9:08 AM in response to Don Archibald

Hmmm...

Just did some side-by-side tests, and discovered that enlarging the browser window's contents (using Cmd-=)...

a) doesn't allow me to "zoom in" nearly as far I sometimes need to (there seems to be a limit to how much the window's contents can be enlarged relative to the size of the window itself?) -- whereas as the Opt-Cmd-= Zoom function can go in much further (making 100 regular-sized pixels fill the entire width of my 1920x1080 external display);

b) and also doesn't appear to apply nearly as much "smoothing" as the Zoom function does.

So unfortunately it now looks like the browser-window-enlargement option is going to be of limited use as an alternative to Lion's strangely disabled behavior in this regard. :-(

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