Taking screenshots from the terminal

Taking screenshots is another common day-to-day activity for any computer user. It becomes even more important for administrators that maintain GUI applications running on computers and automate them. It is important to take screenshots when a particular event happens, to figure out what is going on in a GUI application.

Getting ready

We will be using a tool from the suite of programs called ImageMagick, which was used in the previous recipe as well. Install it using your package manager.

How to do it...

Let's get started with using the import command from ImageMagick to take screenshots:

1. Take the screenshot of the whole screen:

   $ import -window root screenshot.png
   

2. Manually select a region to take the screenshot:

   $ import screenshot.png
   

3. Take a screenshot of a specific window:

   $ import -window window_id screenshot.png
   

   To find out window_id, run the command xwininfo and click on the window you want. Then pass this window_id to the -window option of import.x...