How do I take a screenshot while using Gnome?

GNOME has an in-built screenshot feature for quite some time. Screenshots are stored in $HOME/Pictures, there is no dialog or any confirmation. You just hear the camera click when pressing the screenshot shortcut. By default, the shortcuts are:

  • PrtScn - capture whole screen
  • Alt + PrtScn - capture the current window
  • Shift + PrtScn - the cursor changes to crosshairs, now you can select the region to be captured.
  • Ctrl + Shift + PrtScn - Same as above but save to clipboard.

I would suggest installing the application shutter for taking screenshots. Should be in the repos for Debian. The main site for the app is here: http://shutter-project.org/.

    ss #1

It allows you to configure the PrtScr button so that it captures the screen within Shutter, rather than use GNOME's method for capturing. It also allows you to capture regions, whole windows, the entire desktop, right click dialogs etc. It also allows for annotating images by adding arrows, circles, blurring out text etc.

I use it every day and it's by far the best screen capturing tool I've found in my many years of using Linux. Take a look at the screenshot gallery on the project's website along with the various screencasts showing it in action:

  • http://shutter-project.org/preview/screenshots/

Making it the default for PrtScr

If you'd like to make this change you can do so under GNOME's Settings dialog, specifically the Keyboard applet's Shortcut's tab.

$ gnome-control-center

Will get you to the Settings dialog. From there click on the Keyboard applet, then the Shortcut tab. From here you'll notice one of the choices on the left, it should say Screenshots.

    ss #2

From here you can see what keyboard shortcuts are present on your system, and Shutter can act as a drop in replacement for them by grabbing the full screen, active window, region, etc. But to override them you'll have to add entries under the Custom Shortcuts like so:

    ss #3

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    ss #6

    ss #7

Shutter can be called via command line to do the screen shooting so simply changing the action when one of the buttons is pressed, to the corresponding shutter command, to map other types of actions. From shutter's usage page:

$ shutter --help
Usage:
    shutter [options]

...

  Capture Mode Options:
    -s, --select=[X,Y,WIDTH,HEIGHT]
            Capture an area of the screen. Providing X,Y,WIDTH,HEIGHT is
            optional.

    -f, --full
            Capture the entire screen.

    -w, --window=[NAME_PATTERN]
            Select a window to capture. Providing a NAME_PATTERN (Perl-style
            regex) ist optional.

    -a, --active
            Capture the current active window.

    --section
            Capture a section. You will be able to select any child window
            by moving the mouse over it.

    -m, --menu
            Capture a menu.

    -t, --tooltip
            Capture a tooltip.

    --web=[URL]
            Capture a webpage. Providing an URL ist optional.

    -r, --redo
            Redo last screenshot.

...

So with that mapping in place you can now hit the PrtScr button and get a full screen grab like so:

    ss #8


The screenshot recipe you are asking about uses the gnome-utils package. However, as you can check, the last Debian release that included that package was squeeze.

Since the functionality you describe uses gnome-utils, and since that package is no longer in Debian, it is not surprising the method does not work.

Additionally you can check the info tab of https://wiki.debian.org/ScreenShots, and you'll see the image from there that you include in your question was added in 2007.

Summary: I recommend you use another method to obtain a screenshot. There are many such methods.

Tags:

Gnome

Screenshot

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