Is there a way to take a screenshot using Java and save it to some sort of image?

Solution 1:

Believe it or not, you can actually use java.awt.Robot to "create an image containing pixels read from the screen." You can then write that image to a file on disk.

I just tried it, and the whole thing ends up like:

Rectangle screenRect = new Rectangle(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize());
BufferedImage capture = new Robot().createScreenCapture(screenRect);
ImageIO.write(capture, "bmp", new File(args[0]));

NOTE: This will only capture the primary monitor. See GraphicsConfiguration for multi-monitor support.

Solution 2:

I never liked using Robot, so I made my own simple method for making screenshots of JFrame objects:

public static final void makeScreenshot(JFrame argFrame) {
    Rectangle rec = argFrame.getBounds();
    BufferedImage bufferedImage = new BufferedImage(rec.width, rec.height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
    argFrame.paint(bufferedImage.getGraphics());

    try {
        // Create temp file
        File temp = File.createTempFile("screenshot", ".png");

        // Use the ImageIO API to write the bufferedImage to a temporary file
        ImageIO.write(bufferedImage, "png", temp);

        // Delete temp file when program exits
        temp.deleteOnExit();
    } catch (IOException ioe) {
        ioe.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Solution 3:

If you'd like to capture all monitors, you can use the following code:

GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
GraphicsDevice[] screens = ge.getScreenDevices();

Rectangle allScreenBounds = new Rectangle();
for (GraphicsDevice screen : screens) {
    Rectangle screenBounds = screen.getDefaultConfiguration().getBounds();

    allScreenBounds.width += screenBounds.width;
    allScreenBounds.height = Math.max(allScreenBounds.height, screenBounds.height);
}

Robot robot = new Robot();
BufferedImage screenShot = robot.createScreenCapture(allScreenBounds);

Solution 4:

public void captureScreen(String fileName) throws Exception {
   Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
   Rectangle screenRectangle = new Rectangle(screenSize);
   Robot robot = new Robot();
   BufferedImage image = robot.createScreenCapture(screenRectangle);
   ImageIO.write(image, "png", new File(fileName));
}