How to Convert a Screenshot to a Jpeg on a Mac.
As a blogger, I have to take screenshots of my MacOS often. And luckily there is a built-in option for that (Cmd + Shift + 4 if you don’t already know)
But there is one big problem: by default, macOS saves all screenshots in png format, which, although it is the best option for text, but the file size is too large for online sites.
Related: Why is screenshot always saved as Png?
To give you an idea, below are two full-size screenshots of my iMac 5k, and while there is no discernible difference in quality, the png file is over 5MB and the jpg screenshot is only 32KB. In short, if you frequently upload your screenshot to the Internet, change the default screenshot format to jpg.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Launch Terminal on your Mac. To do this, press the spacebar and cmd to bring up the spotlight search, then find and press “Terminal”.
2. Type or copy / paste the following command into the Terminal window and then press the default enter key, write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
4.From now on, your screenshot format will be jpeg by default. However, the effect will only appear after restarting the Mac. Or you can enter the following command to restart the front-end server (search box) and it will do the same. killall SystemUIServer
5. Press the enter key. And it’s all. From now on, when you take screenshots on MacOS, the default file format should be jpeg.
What if you want another file format?
You can choose any other file format, for example – gif, pdf, png, etc. The command is similar to the method we used above for JPG. Just replace the jpg part at the end of the Terminal command with the file format you want. For instance –
by default write com.apple.screencapture type gif
Change the screenshot format to GIF
by default write com.apple.screencapture type pdf
Change the screenshot format to PDF
by default we write com.apple.screencapture type png
Change screenshot format to PNG
How to change the location where screenshots are saved?
By default, macOS saves all screenshots to the desktop. But it can end up cluttering your desktop, so it’s best to create a new directory for all screenshots. Here’s how to do it.
1. Create a new folder where you want to save screenshots. Open Finder, go to Documents Create a New Folder, let’s call it Screenshots.
2. Open your terminal again, type the following command and press Enter. by default write com.apple.screencapture location / Users / mrinalsaha / Documents / Screenshots
Be sure to replace the name mrinalsaha with your system username, or you can also drag the screenshots folder into the terminal to get the path to it.
3. And that’s it, now if you take a screenshot, it should be saved in the new folder you just created. Related: 8 Ways to Take Screenshots on Windows
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