Fast clipboard image to JPG

Published by in apple, edtech on October 4th, 2006

I have been wanting a software program for some time that will take an image of a screen region on my computer (saved to the clipboard) and immediately upload it as a JPG image to my Flickr account. Not finding something that will do this on the Macintosh side, I have generally used Adobe PhotoShop to paste the clipboard image, save as a JPG, and then upload to Flickr.

This evening I discovered that the “Preview” application which ships on all Macintosh computers can perform this same functionality instead of PhotoShop. After making a screenshot (hold down shift-option-command and press 4 to get the marquee, then click and drag to select the region you want) open the Preview application and choose NEW FROM CLIPBOARD. Then save as a JPG, and upload to Flickr. Very nice. I did not realize Preview had this very handy functionality for Mac OS X users!

On this day..

7 Comments »
  • Lauren

    I think the command is Shift+Ctrl+Apple(command)+4 to save the screen capture to the clipboard.

  • Patrick

    SnagIt from techsmith.com has added a Flickr component with its newest release. But, I do not believe it is compatible with Macs.

    http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/accessories/flickr.asp

    The SnagIt to Flickr profiles are contained in a single, free download for current SnagIt users.

    Once the profiles are installed, choose a SnagIt to Flickr profile to take a capture, and then click the Done button in the Preview Window. SnagIt uploads the capture to Flickr, and also pastes the link (URL) for the image to your Clipboard. From there, you can paste the image link into an e-mail message or an IM conversation.

  • http://www.speedofcreativity.org Wesley Fryer

    Thanks for the correction Lauren– I love using SnagIt on the Windows side patrick, and I’m glad to hear they’re supporting Flickr uploads. That functionality is excellent! :-)

  • Tom

    If one does a lot of work with screen captures, FlySketch from Flying Meat (http://flyingmeat.com/flysketch/) is pretty cool, and there is an “Upload to Flickr” workflow available for it (which I haven’t used).

  • http://ryancollins.org/ Ryan Collins

    You might want to be a little careful posting screenshots to flickr:
    http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,71119-0.html

    :-(

  • Devin Henley

    You can do this very easy.

    get this software!
    http://www.chimoosoft.com/captureme.html

    This will allow you to save the file on the fly to a certain file type like JPEG. You can also save it to any location.

    We could take this one more step further and setup up a folder action that will upload the image on the fly, but I would need to know how you uplaod first. Do they support FTP or WebDAV?

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    Flickr supports a variety of uploading tools but I don’t think you can directly use FTP or WebDAV:

    http://flickr.com/tools/

    Thanks for the link, I hadn’t seen this tool, I’ll give it a try.

    FlySketch looks good, the website doesn’t mention Flickr but I’ll download it and give it a try. Even tho it’s commercial if it supports this functionality I think it would be worth the $.

    http://flyingmeat.com/flysketch/

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