# The &spectacle; Handbook

&Boudhayan.Gupta; &Boudhayan.Gupta.mail;
&Boudhayan.Gupta; &Boudhayan.Gupta.mail;
1997-2000
&Richard.J.Moore;
2000
&Matthias.Ettrich;
2015
&Boudhayan.Gupta;
&FDLNotice;
2016-09-18
Applications 16.12

&spectacle; is a simple application for capturing desktop screenshots. It can capture images of the entire desktop, a single monitor, the currently active window, the window currently under the mouse, or a rectangular region of the screen. The images can then be printed, sent to other applications for manipulation, or quickly be saved as-is.

KDE
spectacle
kdegraphics
screenshot
screen capture
screen grab

## Introduction

&spectacle; is a simple application for capturing desktop screenshots. It can capture images of the entire desktop, a single monitor, the currently active window, the window currently under the mouse, or a rectangular region of the screen. The images can then be printed, sent to other applications for manipulation, or quickly be saved as-is.

Please report any problems or feature requests to the &kde; Bug Tracking System.

## Starting &spectacle;

&spectacle; can be started in a variety of ways, as described below:

- In the application launcher menu, &spectacle; can be found at ApplicationsGraphics Screenshot Capture Utility &spectacle;

- Pressing the Print Screen button on the keyboard will immediately launch &spectacle;. Additionally, two more keyboard shortcuts are available. Pressing MetaPrint Screen will take a screenshot of the active window and save it in your default save folder without showing the GUI, while pressing &Shift;Print Screen will take a screenshot of your entire desktop and save it in your default save folder without showing the GUI.

  You can configure the default save location and filename by starting &spectacle; normally, clicking the downward arrow beside the Save & Exit button, and selecting Preferences from the menu.

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

- &spectacle; can be started from the command-line. &spectacle; has an extensive set of command-line options, including a background mode which can be used to script the capture of screenshots without showing the &GUI; or requiring user interaction.

  To start &spectacle; from the command prompt, type in:

      					% spectacle &

  To view the full list of command-line options and their explanation, type in:

      					% spectacle --help

## Using &spectacle;

Once &spectacle; starts, you will see a window like the following: &spectacle; Main Window

&spectacle; 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 &spectacle; is displayed in the preview window, which is located on the left-hand side of the &spectacle; application window.

To quickly save the image and quit &spectacle; press the Save & Exit (&Ctrl;Q) button. By default, this saves the image as a PNG file in your default Pictures folder, and exits the application immediately. The default save location and filename can be configured, as described later.

The image can be saved by clicking on the arrow portion of the Save & Exit button, and choosing Save As... (&Ctrl;&Shift;S) option. This opens standard save dialog, where you can choose the filename, the folder location, and the format that your screenshot will be saved in. You may edit the filename to anything you wish, including the name of a previously saved screenshot. You may also select the Save... (&Ctrl;S) option, which will save the image to its default location and with the default filename.

### Taking A Screenshot

To discard the current screenshot and take another screenshot, press the Take a New Screenshot (&Ctrl;N) button.

You may configure certain options on the right hand side of the application window before taking a new screenshot. These options allow you to select the area of the screen that is to be captured, set a delay before capturing the image, and configure whether the mouse cursor and/or the window decorations should be captured along with the screenshot.

#### Capture Mode

The capture mode settings allow you to set the area of the screen that should be captured, and whether there should be a delay between pressing the Take a New Screenshot (&Ctrl;N) button and taking the screenshot. You may also enable the On Click checkbox, which disables the delay function and only takes the screenshot after you click anywhere on the screen after clicking the Take a New Screenshot (&Ctrl;N) button.

The Area combo-box allows you to set the area of the screen that should be captured. There are five options to select from, as described below.

- The Full Screen (All Monitors) option takes a screenshot of your entire desktop, spread across all the outputs, including all the monitors, projectors etc.

- The Current Screen option takes a screenshot of the output that currently contains the mouse pointer.

- The Active Window option takes a screenshot of the window that currently has focus. It is advisable to use a delay with this mode, to give you time to select and activate a window before the screenshot is taken.

- The Window Under Cursor option takes a screenshot of the window that is under the mouse cursor. If the cursor is on top of a popup menu, &spectacle; tries to take a screenshot of the menu as well as its parent window.

  While this works most of the time, in certain cases it may fail to obtain information about the parent window. In this case, &spectacle; falls back to old way of capturing the image automatically, and captures an image of only the popup menu. You can also force the old way of capturing the image by checking the Capture the current pop-up only checkbox under Content Options

- The Rectangular Region option allows you to select a rectangular region of your desktop with your mouse. This region may be spread across different outputs.

  This mode does not immediately take a screenshot but allows you to draw a rectangle on your screen, which can be moved and resized as needed. Once the desired selection rectangle has been drawn, double-clicking anywhere on the screen, or pressing the &Enter; button on the keyboard will capture the screenshot.

The Delay spin-box allows you to set the delay between pressing the Take a New Screenshot (&Ctrl;N) button and taking the screenshot. This delay can be set in increments of 1 seconds using the spinbox buttons or to 0.1 seconds using the keyboard.

Enabling the On Click checkbox overrides the delay. When this checkbox is enabled, pressing the Take a New Screenshot (&Ctrl;N) button hides the &spectacle; window and changes the mouse cursor to a crosshair. The screenshot is captured when the mouse is left-clicked, or aborted if any other mouse buttons are clicked. Note that you cannot interact with the desktop using the mouse while the cursor is a crosshair, but you can use the keyboard.

#### Content Options

The content options settings allow you to select whether the mouse cursor should be included in the screenshots, and whether to capture window decorations along with the image of a single application window. In Window Under Cursor mode, it also allows you to select if &spectacle; shall only capture the image of the current popup menu under the cursor, or also include the parent window.

- Enabling the Include mouse pointer checkbox includes an image of the mouse pointer in the screenshot.

- The Include window titlebar and borders option is only enabled when either the Active Window mode or the Window Under Cursor mode is selected in the Area combo-box. Checking this option includes the window borders and decoration in the screenshot, while unchecking it gives an image of only the window contents.

- The Capture the current pop-up only option is only enabled when the Window Under Cursor mode is selected in the Area combo-box. Checking this option captures only the popup menu under the cursor, without its parent window.

## Additional Functionality

### Buttons

There are five buttons located at the bottom of the &spectacle; window. Their functions are described below:

Help

  This button gives you the common menu items described in the Help Menu of the &kde; Fundamentals.

Export Image...

  This drop-down menu will allow you to directly open the screenshot with all programs that are associated with the PNG (Portable Network Graphics) &MIME; type. Depending on what programs are installed, you will be able to open and edit the snapshot in your graphics applications or viewers.

  Furthermore, if you have the KIPI Plugins installed, you will be able to email your screenshots and export them directly to some social networks and websites.

Copy To Clipboard

  This button copies the current screenshot to the clipboard. You can also use the &Ctrl;C keyboard shortcut for this.

Save & Exit

  Clicking this button saves the screenshot as a PNG image in your default Pictures folder and immediately exits the application.

  Additionally, if you click the arrow on the right side of the button, a drop-down menu allows you to simply Save the image, save the image with a different filename, location and format (Save As...), Print the image, and configure the default preferences, such as where to save the image by default and what filename to save it as.

Discard

  Discards the screenshot and immediately exits the application.

### Configure Options

#### Application Preferences

Set save button action to last used save method

  The default behavior of the dynamic save button is to Save & Exit. Enable this option to change the save button to either Save, Save As or Save & Exit, according to the save action you perform, every time you save an image.

Copy Save Location to Clipboard

  When a screenshot is saved, copy the location at which the file was saved to the clipboard. You can then paste it anywhere that accepts text input. Note that you must be running a clipboard manager in order to keep the path in the clipboard after &spectacle; quits.

Use light background color

  Use a light background color to mask the cropped-out area in the rectangular region selector. This may make dark cursors easier to see.

Remember Rectangular Region

  By default, &spectacle; does not show an initial selection when you take a screenshot of a rectangular region. Enable this option to remember the last selected region of the screen, and set it as the initial selection when you use the rectangular region selector the next time.

#### Configure Save Options

When you use the Save & Exit or the Save functions, &spectacle; saves the image with a default filename, in your Pictures folder under your home folder. The default filename includes the date and time when the image was taken.

The Configure Save Options option allows you to set the default save location and filename. Clicking this option brings up a dialog box like the following: Configure Save Options The dialog box includes appropriate help text on how to configure the save options.

### Drag and Drop

A captured image can be dragged to another application or document. If the application is able to handle images, a copy of the full image is inserted there.

If you drag a screenshot into a file manager window, a dialog pops up where you can edit the filename and select the image format and the file will be inserted into the actual folder.

If you drag the screenshot to a text box, the path to the temporary saved file is inserted. This is useful for example to upload a screenshot through web forms or to attach screenshots into bug reports on the &kde; bugtracker.

This works with all clients that do not pick up the image data, but only look for a &URL; in the dragged mimedata.

## Credits and License

Program copyright © 2015 &Boudhayan.Gupta; &Boudhayan.Gupta.mail;.

Portions of the code are based directly on code from the &ksnapshot; project. Copyright © 1997-2011 The &ksnapshot; Developers. Detailed copyright assignment notices are available in the headers in the source code.

Portions of the code are based directly on code from the &kwin; project. Copyright © 2008, 2013 The &kwin; Developers. Detailed copyright assignment notices are available in the headers in the source code.

Documentation based on the original &ksnapshot; documentation:

- Copyright © 1997-2000 &Richard.J.Moore; &Richard.J.Moore.mail;

- Copyright © 2000 &Matthias.Ettrich; &Matthias.Ettrich.mail;

&underFDL; &underGPL;

&documentation.index;