Alternative to Windows Snipping Tool for Mac OSX

There is now a blog entry about Taking Screenshots in a Snap.

It's built into Mac OS.

• ⌘+⇧+3 captures the whole screen
• ⌘+⇧+4 captures a custom rectangle (click and drag over the screen region you want to capture)
• ⌘+⇧+4 then space captures a specific window (move the mouse cursor over the desired window, then click)

Press esc to cancel.

Screenshots are saved onto your Desktop and timestamped.

Holding control in addition to any of the sequences above causes the image to be copied instead of saved to the desktop.

By default the image format is png. However, you can change the format by typing in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format
killall SystemUIServer

Where image_format is one of jpg, tiff, pdf, png, bmp or pict (among others). If you omit the second line, you will need to log out and in again for the change to take effect.

The settings for the shortcuts in the system preferences are located at:
System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Screen Shots

The MacOS X application that enables screenshots is called Grab. It is located at /Applications/Utilities/Grab.app

If you don't want to remember the shortcut keys, you can also use the built-in Preview app.

Just launch Preview, then from the menu, select File, Take Screen Shot, then choose

• From Selection - you will get a crosshair to drag
• From Window - you will get to choose which window to grab
• From Entire Screen - it will give a countdown first, so that you can get back to whatever app you want to take a picture of

It will then display the screenshot in Preview, and you can save, copy, paste, crop, etc. from there.

Macworld magazine's senior editor Dan Frakes just posted a very good short video tutorial (with show transcript) about the screenshot features of Mac OS X. This includes how to use the Grab app from the Utilities folder. The video is at: http://www.macworld.com/article/164123/2011/12/mac_os_x_screenshot_secrets.html.
His show description: "Mac OS X makes it easy to take screenshots—images of your screen or objects on it. But even veteran Mac users are often unaware of the many options available for getting the perfect screenshot. Here's a quick look at these underused options."

If you also need editing capabilities (e.g. like Windows Paint or however it's called these days), Skitch is a good add-on (and it's free).

Easycrop, or start with the insanely great (and free) SnapNDrag, from Yellow Mug — http://www.yellowmug.com/