How to take screenshots in Mint13 Cinnamon? PrtSc notworking

[pepperminty]

I have a fresh install of Mint 13 Cinnamon. I pressed Fn-PrtSc on my laptop and I see a "blink"/"flash", but that's all. I tried pasting the contents of the cilpboard (Ctrl-V) into Gimp, but there's nothing in the clipboard.

When i was using Mint 13 MATE, I would see a dialog window after I press Fn-PrtSc, with the choice of saving the file or copying the image to the cilpboard. I was expecting a similar effect in Cinnamon.

Please help.


UPDATE: I see the screenshots are all saved in my /home/pictures/ directory. I guess that'll do for me.

[karlchen]

Hello, Pepperminty.

On Mint 13 Cinnamon desktop, pressing <PrintScreen> will silently save the whole screen as an image file in the folder /home/your_name/pictures. You found out yourself.
Pressing <Ctrl><PrintScreen> will copy the whole screen to the clipboard. You will be able to paste it into the Gimp application window e.g.

In order to learn and modify the default key combinations used by the programme gnome-screenshot, go to Menu => System Tools => System Settings => Section "Hardware" => Keyboard => Tab "Shortcuts" => Item "Screenshots".

HTH,
Karl

[leopoldbirkholm]

I would like to suggest the software Shutter (http://shutter-project.org/). It's free of charge and gives you a whole lot of options when taking screenshots of your desktop.

[Brucey99]

It doesn't seem very user friendly to secretly save the screenshot to the picture folder.

How is a user supposed to know this? And how are they supposed to know they need to press 'Ctrl' to save it to clipboard?

Any users coming from another OS will generally assume one of two things will happen when they press PrtScr

1. A message dialog will appear asking them where to save it.
or
2. The image will be copied to clipboard

I assumed the first. When that did not happen, I assumed the second. When that did not happen I assumed it was a bug and came on here searching.

The Gnome-Screenshot tool works great and prompts the user for where they want to save it and also gives the option to copy to clipboard - would it not make more sense to show this dialog when using the PrtScr shortcut?

[c-m]

I have to agree with Brucey99 here.

The print screen option in the older Linux Mint (pre-cinnamon) wasn't broken, and functioned well. One has to wonder why it's been changed.

[karlchen]

Hello, Brucey99.

You are right. Making the <PrtScr> key silently take a fullscreen screen shot and silently store it in the folder $HOME/pictures in the Cinnamon edition may not have been the smartest idea, because it makes most users - including myself - think that <PrtScr> is being ignored. (By now I know better, of course.)

Yet, there is a common place to check whether a key / key combination has been assigned a systemwide action:
Menu => System Tools => System-Settings (=gnome-control-center) => Keyboard => Section "Hardware" Keyboard => Keyboard Shortcuts.

There you will find all the system wide keyboard shortcuts, not just the ones used to launch gnome-screenshot.

By the way, Cinnamon does use gnome-screenshot in order to take screenshots just like other Gnome based desktop environments as well. The Cinnamon designer has - for which ever reason - decided to configure the key combinations differently.
But you are free to re-assign <PrtScr> to launch

Code: Select all

gnome-screenshot --interactive

e.g or

Code: Select all

gnome-screenshot --clipboard

Kind regards,
Karl
--
I have got the vague feeling that I posted an almost identical answer only a short while ago.

[Brucey99]

Thanks karlchen.

Personally, I don't mind too much now I know where it's being saved. I've had to delete quite a few screenshots of when I was trying to work out why it wasn't working though

But the point is people who don't read this thread aren't going to know where it's being saved.

Cinnamon is very user friendly, so it would be nice for the screenshot feature to stay consistant with this

I guess the best step to have it changed is by creating a new 'idea'?

Please vote it up if you agree: http://community.linuxmint.com/idea/view/3314

[JoeInMN]

PrintScreen wasn't doing anything at all for me until I finally figured out that I had to install gnome-screenshot. Now it is saving screenshots into my ~/Pictures folder as described above, which works adequately for me. However, I would like to configure two things: 1) Save screenshots into a different directory (e.g. ~/Pictures/screenshots), and 2) Turning off the camera flash/shutter sound effects.

Thanks!

[jimwg]

Seasons Greetings All!

Are these remedies the same for Maya MATE? PrtSc does nothing. I can try to do the keyboard reprogramming to use MATE Screenshot itself, but is there any way to activate native PrtSc instead?

Thanks!

Jim in NYC