Recently, after completing a web-based project, it was necessary to take multiple screenshot of the various states of the project's interface for a "take the tour" feature. Under normal circumstances, I would use the import command from imagemagick to take a screenshot but for some reason, import wouldn't capture the text on some form elements in firefox.

Off I went to find a screen capture app that does what I need, and after a minute of searching my distribution's software repository, and I had found, installed, and tested scrot (screen shot).

The icing on the cake would be to have a simple way to created incremented screenshots, so that I could end up with a set of images named
screenshot.png, screenshot001.png, screenshot002.png, screenshot003.png, etc.

Enter the python...

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os.path
import subprocess

'''start defining some variables'''
file_name = "screenshot" # the base file name
file_extension = "png" # the image type
save_path = os.path.expanduser("~/") #where are we saving the screen shots
increment = 0 #we may need to increment the file names
save_file = "%s.%s" % (file_name,file_extension) # the default screen shot name

#does the save file exist?
while os.path.isfile( save_file ):
    #the file exists, add and increment to the file name
    increment+=1
    if(increment< 10):
        increment_string = "00%i" % (increment)
    elif(increment<100):
        increment_string = "0%i" % (increment)
    else:
        increment_string = "%i" % (increment)
    save_file = "%s%s.%s" % (file_name,increment_string,file_extension)

path_to_save_file = os.path.join(save_path,save_file)   
#what command do we need to run?
command = "scrot -q 100 %s" % ( path_to_save_file )
#run the command
subprocess.call(command,shell=True)

Good and good. The script is named "screenshot", is in my ~/bin folder, and is keybound in my window manager to the "Print" key.

What about screen shots of opened drop-down lists? good question.
Bound to the keyboard combo of "Alt+Print" is the command

sleep 2; screenshot

which will delay for 2 seconds, which is enough time to open the dropdown, and then run screenshot.

As an added feature, scrot will beep when it captures the screen, so it is easy to tell when the delay has ended.