Adding Screen Print to Raspbian

This tutorial will show you how to add screen printing ability to Raspbian "wheezy". It should also work for the other Debian/LXDE versions out there also.

When you are done, you will be able to capture either 1) your entire Desktop: Now, in 5 seconds, in 10 seconds or 2) just a selected area of the Desktop.

To add the ability to create an image of your desktop or sections of it, we will need to create some directories, install a program called Scrot and add 4 scripts and 4 .desktop files.

NOTE: These instructions are hardcoded for the base installation userid pi. If you have are using a different userid, you will have to modify the code to reflect the userid you are using.

Create a bin directory. (If you already have this directory, ignore this step)

cd
mkdir bin

Create a images directory. (If you already have this directory, ignore this step)

cd
mkdir images

Download Scrot

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install scrot

Create 4 scripts in the bin directory.

cd ~/bin
touch scrprint-now.sh scrprint-5sec.sh scrprint-10sec.sh scrprint-select.sh

Open your favorite text editor and add this code to each of the files. All these scripts are variations on the same theme but for "completeness" sake, here are the four files.

scrprint-now.sh

scrot '%Y-%m-%d--%s_$wx$h_scrot.png' -e 'mv $f ~/images/ &amp; gpicview ~/images/$f'

scrprint-5sec.sh

scrot -d 5 '%Y-%m-%d--%s_$wx$h_scrot.png' -e 'mv $f ~/images/ &amp; gpicview ~/images/$f'

scrprint-10sec.sh

scrot -d 10 '%Y-%m-%d--%s_$wx$h_scrot.png' -e 'mv $f ~/images/ &amp; gpicview ~/images/$f'

scrprint-select.sh

scrot -s '%Y-%m-%d--%s_$wx$h_scrot.png' -e 'mv $f ~/images/ &amp; gpicview ~/images/$f'

Now you need to make those shell scripts executable

chmod +x scrprint-now.sh scrprint-5sec.sh scrprint-10sec.sh scrprint-select.sh

As a shortcut, you could also do: chmod +x scrprint*

Create an applications directory in .local/share First let's check to see if it's there already:

cd ~/.local/share
ls

If you see the applications directory there already, cd into it, else

mkdir applications
cd applications

Add 4 new desktop files in the applications directory

Create the following 4 desktop files

touch ScreenPrint.desktop ScreenPrint5.desktop ScreenPrint10.desktop ScreenPrintSelect.desktop

Open your favorite text editor and add this code to each of the files.

ScreenPrint.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Screen Print - Now
Comment=Scrot Screen Print
Categories=Screen Print
Exec=/home/pi/bin/scrprint-now.sh %U
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false

ScreenPrint5.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Screen Print - 5 seconds
Comment=Scrot Screen Print
Categories=Screen Print
Exec=/home/pi/bin/scrprint-5sec.sh %U
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false

ScreenPrint10.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Screen Print - 10 seconds
Comment=Scrot Screen Print
Categories=Screen Print
Exec=/home/pi/bin/scrprint-10sec.sh %U
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false

ScreenPrintSelect.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Screen Print - Selected Area
Comment=Scrot Screen Print
Categories=Screen Print
Exec=/home/pi/bin/scrprint-select.sh %U
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false

These will show up in the Main Menu under the Other category.

Give it a try!

When you run these scripts, the image will be stored in the ~/images directory and GPicView (AKA: Image Viewer) will pop up and show you the image.

The first three just run as advertised.

For the "Select" option, click it in the Main Menu, then with the mouse, click, then drag over the area you want to capture. When you release the mouse button, whatever is in the "selected box" will be captured.