Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Take more screenshots (2022)

alexwlchan.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 178 posts

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#31

Post by RheingoldRiver »

_8j50 wrote: post #3

I actually am in a position where I need to take a screenshot but haven't found any tool on linux that has the right UX like macos builtin screenshot or on windows, greenshot and lightshot. I want to press printscr or some shortcut and immediately screenshot an area of the screen or the whole screen and by default have it saved to a numerically incrementing files under a folder I configure and not have to close or in…

I use Sharex on Windows and I don't think there's any better tool, so I searched for "run sharex on linux" and there is indeed a guide - https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/issues/6531 - maybe you can get it to work?

I believe it can do all of the things you want. Certainly area capture, remembered area capture, fullscreen capture, all bound to different hotkeys. Mine saves with the name = the timestamp but you can probably config it to be an incrementing index. It's incredibly full-featured.

I also have hotkeys for "capture current pixel's hex code" and "measure bounded box in pixels." When you take a capture you can also annotate it including showing labeled steps. After capture you can do one or more of: save locally (to one or more places), upload (to one or more hosts), copy to clipboard, etc. That includes pastebin if you have text saved to your clipboard so I use this for that also.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#32

Post by neilv »

With most side-project software I wrote in the 90s, I definitely found that, nowadays, a screenshot would be more valuable to me than being able to run it.

Some side-project screenshots I do have, I couldn't practically reproduce the conditions under which they were made, even when I can easily still run the code.

I do need to be better about my professional nostalgia/portfolio. Even a couple years ago, when I wrote an internal-only iOS app that worked very nicely, and was sure to get screenshots and video, adding them to the company-wide "nostalgia folder" I maintained... in all the work I did for a smooth handoff when I left that startup, to make sure the company didn't effectively lose any data, I didn't think to ask about keeping some copies of less-sensitive nostalgia photos/videos for myself.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#33

Post by jxf »

xpressvideoz wrote: post #16

I have been taking screenshots for years, but it developed into a hoarding OCD. And it is ruining my life. My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I don't even view those screenshots again in the future so the time spent on those screenshots is completely wasted. I don't recommend having a habit of taking screenshots to those…

> My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things.

I think I lack perspective on this and am not quite understanding what you mean. Where is the interruption coming from? Why do you need to take screenshots?

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#34

Post by cloudmike »

When I started making a game [0] last year, first thing I did was write a little Unity script that takes a screenshot of the opening scene, counts current lines of code using CLOC [1] (for fun, not as a true measure of anything), and occasionally renders it all out to an image file.

With that I'm able to create some pretty fun time lapses of progress. I've been doing this at an arbitrary milestone, whenever my Luau [2] LOC surpasses C++ by another factor. This post reminded me I'm overdue for another now that Luau > 3x C++ LOC.

I find it rewarding to look back at my progress. I'll share in case it's interesting for you too [3].

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/

[1] https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc

[2] https://luau-lang.org

[3] https://twitter.com/kineticpoet/status/1619508466212831232

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#35

Post by Gigachad »

thdc wrote: post #9

This is a lesson I learned too late. Consider extending this idea outside of digital work, to any online hobby. In my case, I think back to all the time I spent on MMOs (basically raised online) and wish I had taken screenshots or recordings of my time then; I have none and it makes me sad. Apply it to real life, too. You'll never know what little meaningful events you'll wish you had records of in the future.

I’ve picked up a habit of photographing everything even mildly notable outside so when the topic comes up at some point, I’ve got useful photographs.

Sometimes it’s years later and someone will bring up a building or street that’s not notable enough to have photos online and my photos are much better than what you get from street view.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#37

Post by lstamour »

Waterluvian wrote: post #20

One of the most powerful things in the mid 00s was having this app that automatically uploaded any screenshot on my Mac and put a URL in my clipboard. This also combined with the feature of the Mac to screenshot a specific area of the screen. This was before the UX of sending images was trivial and the UX of this was so amazing that others asked me to help them set it up. Mind you this was high school and university…

Pretty sure the app was Skitch. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/skitch-for-mac I used to love it for that feature too.

On Windows a similar app was Jing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(software) but the Skitch app could also really easily add text, and had a neat way of dragging and dropping the tab containing the filename to save a file to a particular location or send it somewhere that you rarely see today. It wasn’t intuitive but it was easy once you knew how, like dragging the file icon from the window title bar (a hidden feature of only some document-based macOS apps).

Turning on zooming likely refers to https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210978 which was a feature added to Snow Leopard (maybe) where you could hold the control key and use the mouse wheel or Magic Mouse to zoom in.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#38

Post by nextaccountic »

jxf wrote: post #33
xpressvideoz wrote: post #16

I have been taking screenshots for years, but it developed into a hoarding OCD. And it is ruining my life. My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I don't even view those screenshots again in the future so the time spent on those screenshots is completely wasted. I don't recommend having a habit of taking screenshots to those…

> My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I think I lack perspective on this and am not quite understanding what you mean. Where is the interruption coming from? Why do you need to take screenshots?

> I think I lack perspective on this and am not quite understanding what you mean. Where is the interruption coming from? Why do you need to take screenshots?

I have this too but it's in the form of saving URLs of interesting things. I just fear stumbling upon something nice, not saving it and then not being able to find it again (which happens regularly btw; Google search and reddit search are pretty bad at finding things when my only context is "I saw it last week or something")

Honestly it's exhausting.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#39

Post by darkteflon »

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#40

Post by kaetemi »

xpressvideoz wrote: post #16

I have been taking screenshots for years, but it developed into a hoarding OCD. And it is ruining my life. My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I don't even view those screenshots again in the future so the time spent on those screenshots is completely wasted. I don't recommend having a habit of taking screenshots to those…

Just set up a screen recorder to record a frame once every second into a video file.
Post reply on HN