Print Screen in Mac

When I opened my macbook, the first thing I wanted to do was to take a screenshot and email it to my friend. But there is no Print Screen? First Google result - cmd + shift + 3. Can it be more obscure? 

Sure, it has lot of good functionality built in but a dedicated key or fn+something is more user friendly, isn't it?

Here are all options - 

• Cmd + shift + 3 -- Takes screenshot of the entire screen and saves it as a .png on the desktop
• Cmd + shift + 4 -- Lets you select an area and then saves it as a .png on the desktop
• Cmd + shift + 4 + space -- Lets you take a screenshot of just one window. and saves it as a .png on the desktop

To copy the contents to the clipboard, add control key with above combinations. e.g 

• Cmd + +ctrl + shift + 3 -- Takes screenshot of the entire screen and saves it to the clipboard

Command Line -

For Terminal lovers, screencapture command can be used and it's especially useful for automated scripts. 

$ screencapture -iW ~/Desktop/screen.jpg

File Format 

Mac OX X 10.4 and later versions use .png as a default file format to save the screenshot but this can be changed by using the below command inside Terminal

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format

$ killall SystemUIServer

where image_format can be jpg, tiff, pdf, png, bmp or pict. The second command causes SystemUIServer to restart so that the change takes effect immediately. 

There is also a native app - 

If you don't like so many keys for just a screenshot, you can also use an app called Grab, bundled by Apple by default, to grab a screenshot and view it using Preview application

So much for a simple print-screen!