Wednesday
May142008
The Difference Between Screen Capture and Webpage Capture...
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 16:44 | baratunde | tagged Apple, Mac, OS X, Paparazzi, Screen Capture, Screenshot, Tools, Twitter in Technological
...and why I love Paparazzi
I've been having a Twitter conversation about the challenge of capturing an entire webpage into a single image file. I used to use a tool called Saft which exports entire webpages into PDFs, but since the Safari 3 updates, Saft has gotten increasingly flaky. Because it relies on PDF output, it often triggers the "printer-friendly" rendering of a webpage rather than creating a PDF of what you actually see.
Several people wrote me back in response to my quest basically saying, "why don't you use the screen capture tool?" The short answer is "because I need more than a screen-ful of information. I need a page."
More below with images to show what I mean. I have found the best tool so far though, and it's called Paparazzi. Mac only
Using Apple's built in COMMAND+SHIFT+4 I can only capture what fits inside my browser window, NOT the entire page.
The following is an example, with the raw image file coming in at 994 x 836 pixels
With Paparazzi I can grab the entire, long page, not just what I can see on my monitor at any given time. The following complete image comes in at 967 x 2137 pixels. That's more than double the height of the screen capture tool in OS X
I've been having a Twitter conversation about the challenge of capturing an entire webpage into a single image file. I used to use a tool called Saft which exports entire webpages into PDFs, but since the Safari 3 updates, Saft has gotten increasingly flaky. Because it relies on PDF output, it often triggers the "printer-friendly" rendering of a webpage rather than creating a PDF of what you actually see.
Several people wrote me back in response to my quest basically saying, "why don't you use the screen capture tool?" The short answer is "because I need more than a screen-ful of information. I need a page."
More below with images to show what I mean. I have found the best tool so far though, and it's called Paparazzi. Mac only
Using Apple's built in COMMAND+SHIFT+4 I can only capture what fits inside my browser window, NOT the entire page.
The following is an example, with the raw image file coming in at 994 x 836 pixels
With Paparazzi I can grab the entire, long page, not just what I can see on my monitor at any given time. The following complete image comes in at 967 x 2137 pixels. That's more than double the height of the screen capture tool in OS X
Reader Comments (8)
Actually, the best tool for full-page screenshots, especially with Safari, is Web Snapper. It's not free, but the shortcut key (command-shift-E in Safari) makes it worthwhile!
Check it out:
http://tastyapps.com
Firefox v3 (now it beta) does full-site capture out of the box; there's a little button on the top right for capture. Couldn't be easier. And: its free. And: FF3 is WAY snappier than FF2. All the plugins and add-ons haven't been ported yet, but otherwise its almost ready for prime-time.
Ah google. I had remembered you blogged a tool like this and with the search terms ""Baratunde screen grab" I found this post, #1 hit.
Ah google. I had remembered you blogged a tool like this and with the search terms ""Baratunde screen grab" I found this post, #1 hit.
The problem with Paparazzi is that I cannot capture secured web pages.
The problem with Paparazzi is that I cannot capture secured web pages.
Hands down, it does solve the give off that printer-friendly rendering of a webpage rather than creating a PDF of what you actually see, too bad it's only limited to the big Mac. :(
After reading your post.. It seems to me hat Paparazzi is really great to use..
Thanks for this very useful information..