$ which gnome-screenshot /usr/bin/gnome-screenshot
You can obtain help on using the tool to take a screenshot by typing
gnome-screenshot at a shell prompt.
$ gnome-screenshot --help Usage: gnome-screenshot [OPTION...] Take a picture of the screen Help Options: -h, --help Show help options --help-all Show all help options --help-gtk Show GTK+ Options Application Options: -c, --clipboard Send the grab directly to the clipboard -w, --window Grab a window instead of the entire screen -a, --area Grab an area of the screen instead of the entire screen -b, --include-border Include the window border with the screenshot -B, --remove-border Remove the window border from the screenshot -d, --delay=seconds Take screenshot after specified delay [in seconds] -e, --border-effect=effect Effect to add to the border (shadow, border or none) -i, --interactive Interactively set options --display=DISPLAY X display to use
If you wish to capture a window to an image file, you can use the
-w or --window option. To be able to switch to the
appropriate window, you may need to allow a delay of a few seconds, which
you can do with the -d or --delay option. You can
specify the file name you wish to use for the captured image with the
-f or --file= option.
Note: not all versions of gnome-screenshot support the option of specifying
a filename with -f or --filename=. E.g., when I
ran the command on a
Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS (Precise Pangolin) system, I saw "Unable to parse
arguments" when I tried either option.
$ gnome-screenshot -w -d 10 -f new_personal_messages.png ** (gnome-screenshot:11819): CRITICAL **: Unable to parse arguments: Unknown option -f $ gnome-screenshot -w -d 10 --filename=new_personal_messages.png ** (gnome-screenshot:11820): CRITICAL **: Unable to parse arguments: Unknown option --filename=new_personal_messages.png $
When I checked the version of the package that was installed on that system
with apt-cache show gnome-screenshot, I saw it was version
3.4.1-0.
$ apt-cache show gnome-screenshot Package: gnome-screenshot Priority: optional Section: gnome Installed-Size: 184 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com> Original-Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <pkg-gnome-maintainers@lists.aliot h.debian.org> Architecture: i386 Version: 3.4.1-0ubuntu1.1 Replaces: gnome-utils (<< 2.30.0-2) Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7), libcairo2 (>= 1.10.0), libcanberra-gtk3-0 (>= 0.25), li bcanberra0 (>= 0.2), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.23.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.31.0), l ibgtk-3-0 (>= 3.1.6), libx11-6, libxext6, dconf-gsettings-backend | gsettings-ba ckend Breaks: gnome-utils (<< 2.30.0-2) Filename: pool/main/g/gnome-screenshot/gnome-screenshot_3.4.1-0ubuntu1.1_i386.de b Size: 34274 MD5sum: a8e53f51fa6e9348cefbacb1ef87cd18 SHA1: 16dbcac37784a9b444bc8e8bb4c123cd5c5a577c SHA256: db5bced68b61b8f46a2f9f5c3598bcb6b72277efd6f583cfea4ff28aa41b57e1 Description-en: screenshot application for GNOME This tool takes a picture of the desktop or of a window and saves it into a file. Homepage: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeUtils Description-md5: c90436a1a5b51bb06f2cb8922490040a Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug Origin: Ubuntu Supported: 5y Task: ubuntu-desktop, ubuntu-usb, edubuntu-desktop, edubuntu-usb Package: gnome-screenshot Priority: optional Section: gnome Installed-Size: 188 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com> Original-Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <pkg-gnome-maintainers@lists.aliot h.debian.org> Architecture: i386 Version: 3.4.1-0ubuntu1 Replaces: gnome-utils (<< 2.30.0-2) Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7), libcairo2 (>= 1.10.0), libcanberra-gtk3-0 (>= 0.25), li bcanberra0 (>= 0.2), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.23.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.31.0), l ibgtk-3-0 (>= 3.1.6), libx11-6, libxext6, dconf-gsettings-backend | gsettings-ba ckend Breaks: gnome-utils (<< 2.30.0-2) Filename: pool/main/g/gnome-screenshot/gnome-screenshot_3.4.1-0ubuntu1_i386.deb Size: 34090 MD5sum: 47aceb693696582dbd694e188a92ed9e SHA1: 65cd5e7e159498dc07671ecbf31b412228fdc8e6 SHA256: 9660dd48d003a0729f1dce7b2b160071fdb96f8d57ee51be736fe8d9879e3bfa Description-en: screenshot application for GNOME This tool takes a picture of the desktop or of a window and saves it into a file. Homepage: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeUtils Description-md5: c90436a1a5b51bb06f2cb8922490040a Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug Origin: Ubuntu Supported: 5y Task: ubuntu-desktop, ubuntu-usb, edubuntu-desktop, edubuntu-usb $
But when I ran sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade gnome-screenshot
to attempt to upgrade the software to a later version, I found one
was not available.
$ sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade gnome-screenshot Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done gnome-screenshot is already the newest version. The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: linux-headers-3.2.0-32 libsqlite3-dev linux-headers-3.2.0-32-generic zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev libreadline-gplv2-dev linux-headers-3.2.0-32-generic-pae libtinfo-dev Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n Abort. $
So I ran the command gnome-screenshot -a, which allowed me to
select an area of the screen for capturing to a file.
After I had selected the area of the screen by clicking at one corner of
the area I wished to capture and then dragging the mouse pointer to select
the entire area, a "Save Screenshot" window then opened that allowed me
to select the folder and file name for the output
PNG file. I could have also chosen "Copy to Clipboard".