Can someone tell me why on earth my screenshot files are so **** big? 6.2megabytes is abnormally large for a screenshot. Is this because I got a the new MBP or is it the Yosemite update to 10.10.5? Is there a way I can change some setting to lower the resolution, and therefore size, of the screenshots I take?
6.2MB screenshots??
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vansmith
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What MBP are you talking about? I haven't used a newer one but I do know that the resolution is huge which might explain the level of detail and thus the size of the screenshots.
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chas_m
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I'm using a 2012 MBP, and just took a screenshot using shift-command-3, which of course produced two screenshots because I have two monitors. The screenshot of the built-in MBP screen was 2MB for a resolution of 1280x800 on a non-Retina 13-inch in PNG format: the 24-inch secondary monitor has a resolution of 1920x1080 (also known as 1080p or "FullHD") and produced a file that was 1MB in size.
I suspect the reason the "higher-rez" and larger screen produced a smaller file to have something to do with dot pitch/ppi, but offhand I don't know that for certain. A Retina display is likely to produce a screenshot of greater size if my theory is correct.
To reduce the size of screenshots, you can either focus them to just the area you actually want to show, or save them in a more compressed format such as JPG. There are several third-party programs (such as Deeper, from the makers of OnyX that can change the default file format of your screenshots; PNG is the Apple default these days).
I suspect the reason the "higher-rez" and larger screen produced a smaller file to have something to do with dot pitch/ppi, but offhand I don't know that for certain. A Retina display is likely to produce a screenshot of greater size if my theory is correct.
To reduce the size of screenshots, you can either focus them to just the area you actually want to show, or save them in a more compressed format such as JPG. There are several third-party programs (such as Deeper, from the makers of OnyX that can change the default file format of your screenshots; PNG is the Apple default these days).
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