# The &ksnapshot; Handbook

## Introduction

&ksnapshot; is a simple applet for taking screenshots. It is capable of capturing images of either the whole desktop or just a single window. The images can then be saved in a variety of formats.

Please report any problems or feature requests to the KDE mailing lists

## Using &ksnapshot;

This chapter describes the use of &ksnapshot; for capturing screen images.

### Starting &ksnapshot;

&ksnapshot; may be started by one of several ways as described below.

- You may start &ksnapshot; by selecting it from the Graphics submenu of the panel.

- You may start &ksnapshot; by entering the following at the command prompt:

      % ksnapshot &

- The mini command line (invoked with &Alt;F2) may also be used to start &ksnapshot;

Once &ksnapshot; starts, you will see a window like the following: &ksnapshot; Preview Window

### Taking A Snapshot

&ksnapshot; grabs an image of your entire desktop immediately after it is started, but before it displays itself on screen. This allows you to quickly create full-desktop screenshot images.

The snapshot taken by &ksnapshot; is displayed in the preview window, which is located in the upper center of the &ksnapshot; application window. Below is an example of the preview window from &ksnapshot;. Your preview will differ depending on what you have displayed on the desktop.

&ksnapshot; Preview Window

The snapshot displayed may be saved immediately by clicking on the Save button. The filename that the snapshot will be saved under appears in the Filename: box. If multiple snapshots are taken, the filename is automatically incremented to prevent you from overwriting previous snapshots. You may however edit the filename to anything you wish, including the name of a previously saved snapshot.

To take a snapshot of a single window, enable the Only grab the window containing the pointer and then click with the left mouse button in the window you wish to capture. &ksnapshot; will display the new snapshot in the preview area, at which time you can choose to save the new image (by pressing the Save) or to grab a new one, by pressing the Grab button. This is &ksnapshot;'s default behavior.

To take a new snapshot of the entire desktop, uncheck the Only grab the window containing the pointer option. &ksnapshot; will now capture the entire desktop if you press Grab.

### Additional Features

#### Delay

The Delay: box allows you to enter an arbitrary time delay, in seconds, between the time that you press the Grab button and the time that the snapshot is taken.

When a delay time has been set, you do not have to click the mouse button to capture a screenshot. This enables you to open a drop down menu, and take a picture of it.

#### Buttons

There are two further buttons located at the bottom of the &ksnapshot; window. There function is described below.

Help

- Activates the online manual for &ksnapshot;.

Close

- Closes the &ksnapshot; application.

## Credits and License

Program copyright

- 1997-2000 Richard J. Moore rich@kde.org

- 2000 Matthias Ettrich ettrich@kde.org

Documentation based on the original, copyright 1997-2000 Richard J. Moore rich@kde.org

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &ksnapshot;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Requirements

A successful installation of &kde; 3.0 is required to use &ksnapshot;.

All required libraries as well as &ksnapshot; itself can be found on &kde-ftp; or one of it's mirrors.

### Compilation and Installation

&ksnapshot; may be installed from the &package; package either by installing a binary RPM or by compiling the source package.

#### Installing from RPMs

To install the &package; package from a binary RPM you must be logged in as root. Assuming that the name of the RPM is `filename.rpm`, do the following at the command prompt:

    % rpm -ivh filename.rpm

Should you run into problems please report them to the &kde; mailing lists.

#### Installing from source

&install.compile.documentation;
&documentation.index;