How do I take a high resolution screenshot?

I don't quite understand all the follow up questions. She's doing screenshots using Command Shift 4. They come in at 72dpi. She wants to know if she can take screenshots at a higher resolution, say 100 dpi... my goodness.

It isn't possible. The screen elements have all been created at a specific pixel size. No matter how you try to adjust the display, a screen grab will always be pixel count based.

Two examples:

1) I turned zoom on in the System Preferences and zoomed up the Accessibility panel with the check box to scroll zoom. I had the System Preferences almost filling my 24" screen, then used Command+Shift+4 to specifically draw a marquee for the System Preferences panel only. Instead, what I got was what the marquee would have captured if I hadn't zoomed in. None of my drive icons on the right were caught, and a couple of PDF files at the right were partially in the marquee area. Notice that after I zoomed back out to my normal desktop resolution that the panel hadn't actually been captured any larger than normal. This screen shot is the capture displaying behind a live System Preferences panel. Note that they're still the same size. Zooming didn't actually increase anything as far as pixel size. Visual only.

2) So then I changed the desktop resolution to 1280x800 and took a screen shot. Put it back to 1920x1200 (my default resolution) and displayed the screen shot behind the System Preferences. Same thing. The capture isn't actually any larger. It's still the same set number of pixels tall and wide it was created at. Changing the screen's resolution to a lower number doesn't increase the amount of the panel, just how much space it gets spread out to on the screen for the lower screen resolution.

That's a pretty large image. So whatever is causing the shrinkage is in the uplead to the blog. You will have to see if the blog has any settings you can modify so it does not reduce the images.

other than that, it may be the css styles for the blog that reduces them, as such you will need to work out on the blog what is causing the reduction. It's definitely not the screenshots themselves that need altering though.

The screen shot is taken at whatever the resolution of the screen is - you can't take a shot at a higher res. For example, on my 13" MBA, a full-screen capture is 1440x900 pixels, which is the native resoltuion of the screen.

There is nothing you can do to enhance the image once you capture it. You can only manipulate it up to the resolution and dimensions you captured.

Can you give us a bit more information? How do you want to "change the size of the screenshot?"

The MacBook Pro with Retina already has a pretty large resolution.

All 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models (A1398) have a 15.4" color display with 2880x1800 native resolution at 220 ppi and all 13-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models (A1425, A1502) have a 13.3" color display with 2560x1600 native resolution at 227 ppi.

Why exactly do you need it to be larger? How much larger? what type of resolution are you looking for?

If you want a larger screen capture size all you need to do is reduce the dimensions used in the Display preferences.

A smaller size display will make your images appear larger but the quality may drop a little.

How did you capture your screen shots?

Its seems something is happening between the screen shot and uploading to your blog?

Something is reducing the size. Its even possible your blog is adjusting the images to thumbnail size, but the actual image file is still full sized.

Without knowing exactly what you are doing its very difficult to provide any specific help.

boysx3 wrote:

Thanks. I want to capture screenshots and upload them to a blog and the first images I tried to capture were really tiny and difficult to read.

Was this after you uploaded them?

If so the website you were uploading to downsized them

Take one of the images you uploaded that ended up being very small, and try to upload it here using the camera button at the top of the reply box. That at least will tell us whether your images are small to start with or not.

Would it be possible for you to upload the original Shift+CMD+4 screenshot to this discussion forum? Click the camera button on the comment form and upload the picture please. If it appears large here then the problem might be with your blog or the way you are uploading to the blog.

I suppose. There is no way to get a higher resolution shot of any on screen element. If say, a toolbar was created to be 150 pixels high by whoever designed the tool window, then it will always be 150 pixels high. The element itself, that is; not how many screen pixels it will take up depending on your monitor's resolution setting.

There may be one way to get around that. I haven't tried it yet to see the result. I also haven't yet tested to see if this command still works in Yosemite. But if you want to give it a shot:

Open Terminal and copy/paste the following command into Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true

It is all one line, though it may wrap in the forum window. When selected and copied, it will paste as a single line in Terminal. Press enter. You will be asked to enter your admin password. If you've never used sudo before, you'll also get a generic warning about the possible dangers of using sudo. After entering your password to allow the command to complete, close Terminal.

Open the System Preferences and click on Displays. With the Display tab selected, click on the radio button for Scaled. Now the trick. Option+click directly on the word Scaled. The list below will expand not only to show other normal resolutions your monitors and video hardware support, but you'll also get a bunch of HiDPI choices at the bottom of the list.

The highest resolution of those to choose will be half the default resolution for whichever panel you're changing the resolution for. If you don't see them, you may need to first log out and then log back into your account, or restart.

With a HiDPI setting in use, now try taking a screen grab of the elements you want. Go back to your normal resolution and compare how the HiDPI screen shot compares in size to a normal grab.

For something like that, I'd just recreate it in Illustrator. The text you'll be able to grab, so you'll have them as a fonts rather than raster images (you can check what fonts are being used in the web page's source code, which you may not be able to exactly reproduce). The rounded corner box is cinch to recreate, and you then just drop the same white text over it. The dots are also no problem to recreate. Just type the same number of periods show here, then change the point size of them until it matches (you may need to change the kerning a bit to match the fit). Pick up the colors of the screen grab and assign the same color to your Illustrator elements.

Overall, it shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes to recreate it all as fully scalable vector art and fonts. But that's this one. Other items you need may not be anywhere near as easy to duplicate.

They come in at 72dpi. She wants to know if she can take screenshots at a higher resolution, say 100 dpi... my goodness.

You're confusing resolution with pixel dimensions. Web sites and video production pay absolutely no attention to resolution. If you have a 300 pixel by 500 pixel image, it will display at that size no matter what resolution it's set to.

One thing I could recommend is using Command + and enlarging the item on the screen, then take your screen shot. Not perfect, but it will at least be larger to start with.

No, it won't. I explained that above. That is a visual change only. The captured area will be the same pixel dimensions whether you cut it at normal size or zoomed in.

keltoid15 wrote:

I don't quite understand all the follow up questions. She's doing screenshots using Command Shift 4. They come in at 72dpi. She wants to know if she can take screenshots at a higher resolution, say 100 dpi... my goodness.

No, that's not what they wanted to know.

The problem was not the pixel density resolution of the image, but the way the Blog was presenting the image. It does not matter if its 144 or 500dpi, if the physical dimensions of the image are getting altered during upload the image will still look very very small regardless of the pixel density.