Taking screenshots is something that we do often, and one of the limitations we always face is the ability to take a full length image of a website. This feature is not included in most screen capture tools, and you often need a separate software for that. For Linux users who love the command line, here is a quick and easy way you can use to take full length screenshots of websites directly from the terminal.
Gnome-web-photo is a Gnome application that you can use to capture screenshots of websites. As a Gnome application, it is not limited to any distro. You can install it on your Linux system as long as it supports GTK+ 3.0.
In a Ubuntu-based distro, you can install it with the command:
sudo apt-get install gnome-web-photo
For Fedora, or yum-based distro, use the command:
sudo yum install gnome-web-photo
Usage
To get started, you just need to type the command:
gnome-web-photo URL output.png
Replace “URL” with the url of the website and change “output.png” to the name you want to save the file as.
This will produce an image like this:
Gnome-web-photo doesn’t work with jpg format, so you have to use png for the image.
There are other modes that you can use as well. For example, if you want to capture a thumbnail image (256x256px) instead of the full-length sreenshot, add --mode=thumbnail to the command:
gnome-web-photo --mode=thumbnail URL output.png
To capture the image as a PDF, use the --mode=print argument:
gnome-web-photo --mode=print URL output.pdf
To add a timeout, just in case the website cannot be retrieved, you can add the argument --timeout=T to the command:
gnome-web-photo --timeout=60 URL output.png
Alternatively, you might also want to add a delay before it takes the screenshot. Add the argument --delay=D to the command:
gnome-web-photo --delay=10 URL output.png
By default, gnome-web-photo will only take a screenshot with a width of 1024px. You can change the width by adding the --width=W argument.
gnome-web-photo --width=1920 URL output.png
Conclusion
Gnome-web-photo is a simple, yet useful, tool to take screenshots of websites. And being a command line tool, it is good for server use where most GUI applications are useless. Try it out and let us know if it works for you.
Image credit: Digital photo camera in studio with softbox and flashes. 3d by BigStockPhoto
Damien Oh started writing tech articles since 2007 and has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. He is proficient in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS, and worked as a part time WordPress Developer. He is currently the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Make Tech Easier.
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