Capture Screenshots using terminal or script with Shutter

For screenshots my favorite Linux tool is 'Shutter' which has lots of features. It can be useful to capture a screenshot using the terminal or a script. This post details how you can quickly use it on Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

• To install shutter

$ sudo apt-get -y install shutter

• Also useful to install (details at end of post)

$ sudo apt-get -y install gnome-web-photo libnet-dbus-glib-perl libimage-exif-perl libimage-exiftool-perl

• Capture the full screen :

$ shutter -e -f -o FullScreen.png

• Capture active window :

$ shutter -e -a -o ActiveWindow.png

Syntax

-a : Capture the current active window
-e : Exit after the first capture has been made
-f : Capture the entire screen 
-o : Filename to save the screenshot

Note : You can save to jpeg, png, gif and bmp format

• Using a sleep command with shutter enables you to setup the capture as required :

$ sleep 5 && shutter -e -f -o FullScreen.png

• Then open the file e.g. my workspace 

• A simple bash script is

#!/bin/bash # Valid file types : jpeg, png, gif and bmp FILETYPE='.png' DIR=~/Pictures/screenshots/ TIMEDELAY=5 if [ -z "$1" ] then echo "Error : No File Name supplied" echo "Example : CaptureFullScreen.sh FullScreen" exit fi FILENAME=$1$FILETYPE cd $DIR sleep $TIMEDELAY && shutter -e -f -o $1$FILETYPE

• This example will create a file called 'FullScreen.png' after 5 seconds under the directory '~/Pictures/screenshots/' 

$ CaptureFullScreen.sh FullScreen

Some Useful Things

• You can add the script under the a bin directory in your home folder i.e. mkdir ~/bin/
• Add your bin directory (insert your username for <username>) to your PATH within ~/.bashrc

Syntax 

export PATH=/home/<username>/bin:$PATH

Example

export PATH=/home/cwishaw/bin:$PATH

• Give the file executable privileges

$ chmod +x CaptureFullScreen.sh

• Using a fast access top down terminal like Guake is great to quickly start scripts with F12
• Further details can be found with 'man shutter'

Additional Package details

• gnome-web-photo: Create snapshot images and print web pages from the command line

• libnet-dbus-glib-perl - extension for the DBus GLib bindings

• libimage-exiftool-perl - Library and program to read and write meta information in multimedia files

• libimage-exif-perl - Perl module to extract EXIF information from image files