In software manuals, multimedia presentations and technical documentation screenshots are de rigueur for illustrating various functionality and options. Every common desktop environment in Linux provides its own tool for creating them.

Unfortunately, programs like Ksnapshot are missing various functions, such as capturing menu hierarchies, thus requiring laborious reworking with Gimp to get the desired results. Shutter makes this task easier by providing all the required tools from the start.

Set the Stage

You can find Shutter in the software repositories of all the major distributions. Because the program is constantly evolving, some repositories do contain outdated versions for installation.

Although the current source code is always available [1], the many dependencies of the program written in Perl make it advisable to resort to a prebuilt package [2].

After a successful installation, you'll find the corresponding starter in the desktop menu structure. Shutter is compatible with Gnome, KDE, and Xfce. Once called, the system tray will include a new icon that you can click without having to maneuver through untold menus.

Essentials

Shutter starts up in an unspectacular window. At the top edge, you'll find the obligatory menu bar; under that is a row of buttons for quick access to the important functions. The main part of the window starts out empty and will later hold the screenshots.

The toolbar buttons let you capture the full screen, a window or subwindow, part of a window, a menu, or a freely definable area. You can also capture tooltips. Next to the buttons for full screen or window capture, you will find three little triangles that open a drop-down menu when clicked.

From this menu, you can choose which desktop interface you want to capture, resulting in toggling among them. When recording the window of an open program, you select it from the corresponding menu. This means you don't have to minimize, move, or close windows with multiple applications open in order to capture the desired one (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The main Shutter window focuses on the essentials without detracting from their functionality.

Another highlight of the software is the ability to capture screenshots from web pages without needing to open the browser and the actual page. To use this feature, you need to integrate the gnome-web-photo package found in most of the major distribution repositories.

You activate the module by clicking the world icon on the program's toolbar, which opens a dialog where you enter the URL of the web page. Subsequently clicking Capture at the bottom right of the dialog makes the software try the screenshot.

If this is not immediately successful because of a slow Internet connection, you can set the wait time by clicking the down arrow in the module's submenu. Shutter tries to capture the shot in the time specified and shows it in the session window as usual.

Unlike browser screenshots, the software captures the entire web page and not just the part that displays in the browser. (Figure 2).

Figure 2: A web page screenshot captured by Shutter isn't limited to the visual area in the browser, but encompasses the entire page.

Configuration

Shutter provides unusually extensive configuration options in its Edit | Settings menu. On the General tab, you define the default storage format along with various options for automatic backup of screenshots. The available storage formats that appear in the File Type dialog are PNG, JPEG, and BMP.

On the Advanced tab, you set the screenshot size and capture area options. If you want to include menus and tooltips, it's suggested that you set a capture delay of a few seconds – because tooltips usually appear only after a one- or two-second delay. Even complex hierarchical menus need some delay time before you can reach the desired item.

The Actions tab lets you define what you want to use as an image editing tool after the capture. The default is the integrated Shutter editor, which provides an efficient tool on a smaller scale. Other important settings can be found on the Behavior tab, such as the startup nature, alerts, window settings, and removal routines.

The Upload tab allows an uncomplicated saving of the screenshots through various cloud services, such as TwitPic, Imgur, or ImageBanana. You can upload the images anonymously there or under your own account – that is, authorized . If you choose the latter option, you will need to add your username and password for the service in the configuration dialog.

To upload screenshots to your infrastructure, enter the setting under Protocol for Data Transfer (FTP) . In this case, the screenshot can be saved in the cloud without going over a web page or a third-party program. Just click the Export button in the toolbar and choose the desired service from the list (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Shutter lets you publish screenshots at various image providers or save them on your own FTP server.

Shutter also has a command-line option that provides an extensive set of parameters that accompany those of the graphical interface. To see all the options, you can enter the shutter --help command.

Profiles

Certain types of screenshots always require the same settings. To avoid having to configure options over and over again in the dialog, you can save them in a profile. You can do this by clicking the stylized hard disk icon button in the upper right and entering a distinguishing name for the profile.

Shutter saves the new profile on the Save button. To use the predefined profile for a later screenshot, open the Edit menu and choose Profile Selection .

Extensions

The Plugins tab includes the various extensions that you can get for the software. The available plugins allow customizing screenshots with effect filters. You get to the corresponding dialog by selecting Screenshot | Execute Plugin . There, you can choose the plugin you want to use.

Other plugins are also available, such as Drop Shadows or Watermarks , along with a few less useful ones, such as Barrel Distortion or Inversion .

The fact that some of the plugins were less than optimal was shown during testing with Watermarks : When modifying the display position, Shutter crashed unceremoniously after accepting the changes.

Final Touches

After creating a screenshot with the desired settings, the software shows it in the free area of the window. Shutter attaches the screenshots to separate tabs and stores them at the same time in the configured images folder.

Shutter also activates two additional buttons on the right edge of the menu bar. Clicking the left button opens the editor window where the screenshot appears enlarged.

Above it, you'll see various function buttons with which you can save the screenshot, enlarge it, reduce it, undo the last action, or save the image on the clipboard. You can also move other screenshots from the clipboard to the window.

On the left side of the editor window, you'll find vertically organized icons similar to those in the Gimp toolbox, with the functions to match. With these tools, you can highlight parts of screenshots using lines, arrows, rectangles, or circles (Figure 4).

Figure 4: An image editor specially tailored for screenshots extends the already numerous Shutter functions.

The toolbar also includes functions that let you select text passages or pixelate certain areas. A censorship function covers any affected areas with a gray screen and makes them virtually unrecognizable. Finally, a cropping function lets you extract vital areas from the screenshots.

If the editing functions don't suit your purposes, you can use Screenshot | Open with… to open an external editing program. The resulting dialog shows all the graphics programs that are resident on the system. This feature avoids any annoying detour to a save dialog and the subsequent manual launch of an image editing program.

Our tests with version 0.90.1 under openSUSE 13.2, however, showed that the software was not fully mature. Although the Settings | Open with… window listed all the installed graphics programs, the above-mentioned dialog remained empty.

Exporter

You save the screenshots using File | Save as… . Shutter stores them by default in the PNG file format. However, if you click File Type in the dialog, a drop-down menu shows all the additional file types that Shutter supports, including TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, and GIF.

Alternatively, the software lets you export the screenshots as PDF or PostScript documents. To do so, in File choose the corresponding option and enter the file name and path in a subsequent save dialog. Because Shutter saves the current screenshot in the clipboard, you can easily open it in an external application.

Conclusion

Shutter stands out because, unlike the standard programs of the various desktop environments, it considers even exotic needs and places great emphasis on practicality. Bloggers and authors can benefit from its excellent editing functions – particularly the possibility of editing screenshots.