About Screenshots

Screenshots on the Mac

In OSX screenshots of windows can be done with ⇧⌘4, then pressing the Spacebar, then a click takes a screenshot of the window - including shadows. These screenshots are by default in PNG, change the default to JPG with the following:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG

Screenshots and Transparency

Upgrading (and moving) to a computer running OSX 11.2.1 (coming from 10.15.7), and changing the default screenshot format to JPG, is resulting in the following:

Turning Off Shadows in Screenshots

To take a screenshot of windows and elements without shadows there are two options:

• Start with Apple-Shift-4 (⌘⇧4), change to window selection with space, click to take the screenshot. Keeping Option (⌥) pressed, will take the screenshot without a the shadow.
• Disable the shadows in screenshots altogether with:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool FALSE

Check the status of com.apple.screencapture:

defaults read com.apple.screencapture
{
    "disable-shadow" = 0;
    "last-analytics-stamp" = "636440406.505895";
    "last-messagetrace-stamp" = "635148504.597851";
    "last-selection-display" = 0;
    style = selection;
    type = JPG;
    video = 1;
}

Import Screenshots Automatically to the OSX Photos.app

Folder Actions is a feature of macOS that lets you associate AppleScript scripts with folders. Reference

1. Open the Screenshot.app. (Find it in Applications/ Utilities)

2. Set the Screenshot Folder in Options to your desired Folder. I am using a Folder on Dropbox, but any is fine.

3. Open Folder Actions Setup.app from System/Library/CoreServices /Applications/

4. Enable Folder Actions and add the Screenshot Folder on the left.

5. Add a Workflow on the right, and click to edit it.

6. This opens Automator.

7. Add the Import Files into Photos Actions

8. That's it!