Taking a screenshot on a Mac is a breeze as it only requires a simple keystroke. However, often what you want to share is present in a specific portion of the screenshot you took. That’s exactly where the need for one screenshot on Mac comes into play. If that seems like a daunting task, we’ve explained how to crop a screenshot on Mac or MacBook in this guide.
1. Crop screenshots with a keyboard shortcut
Although you can use your Mac’s built-in screenshot tool to take a screenshot, there may be times when you need to focus on a particular section. In that case, you can use the Preview tool to crop screenshots on your Mac or MacBook. Not only can you use the Preview tool to crop screenshots, but you can also resize or annotate them. That said, here’s how to crop screenshots on Mac using keyboard shortcuts:
- In the desired Mac window, press the “Shift + Command + 3″ keys to take a screenshot of the entire screen.
- Now immediately open the screenshot click on the miniature in the bottom right corner, or wait for it to appear on your desktop and then open it.
- In the screenshot preview window, use your MacBook’s mouse pad to create a rectangular selection of the area you want to crop from your screenshot.
- When you’re done, press the “Command + K” keys together on your Mac’s keyboard to crop the selected area from your screenshot.
- Follow the first three steps of the previous method to take a screenshot and select a portion of it.
- When you’re done, click Tools in the top menu bar, then select “Crop” from the drop-down menu.
- And with that, the area you selected in the previous step will be cropped from your screenshot.
3. Crop a screenshot on Mac with Touch Bar
While cropping a screenshot on the Mac using the keyboard shortcut is easy, older MacBook Pro models make the process even easier. You can use the TouchBar to crop screenshots with a single tap, here’s how:
- As we already mentioned, take a screenshot and make a rectangular selection as we did above.
- Search now and tap the Crop icon (a square icon with extended corners) on your MacBook Pro’s TouchBar to crop the area you previously selected.
- Here’s what the cropped screenshot will look like in all the methods explained above:
Remark: Your Mac will automatically save the cropped screenshot, so don’t forget to make a copy of your original screenshot beforehand to protect yourself from any data loss.
4. Crop a screenshot with the Photos app
In addition to the Preview tool, you can also use Mac’s Photos app to edit and crop screenshots. Not just cropping, the Photos app also allows advanced editing so you can adjust the color, resize the image, apply filters and much more. Here’s how to edit screenshots on Mac with the Photos app:
- In a desired Mac app, press the “Shift + Command + 3″ keys to take a screenshot of the entire screen.
- Now right-click on the screenshot preview thumbnail that appears in the bottom right corner and then select the Open in Photos option in the pop-up menu.
- Now click on the Edit button in the top right corner of the Photos app.
- Here, click the Crop button in the editing toolbar that appears at the top.
- Now crop handles will appear around your screenshot, allowing you to adjust the crop area.
- Click and drag the handles to resize the crop box on your screenshot. You can also move the entire crop box around your screenshot by clicking and dragging within it.
- When you are happy with the crop selection, press Enter or click the Done button in the upper right corner of the window.
After you click the Done button, the Photos app will automatically save your cropped screenshot. Your perfectly cropped screenshot is now ready on Mac so you can share or print it with others right away. And if you use your iPhone to edit screenshots, you can do that too use “quick crop” in the Photos app on your iPhone.
