The pyscreenshot
module can be used to copy
the contents of the screen to a PIL or Pillow image memory using various back-ends.
Replacement for the ImageGrab Module, which works on Windows only,
so Windows users don't need this library.
For handling image memory (e.g. saving to file, converting,..) please read PIL or Pillow documentation.
- Links:
- home: https://github.com/ponty/pyscreenshot
- documentation: http://pyscreenshot.readthedocs.org
- PYPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyscreenshot
- Goal:
- Pyscreenshot tries to allow to take screenshots without installing 3rd party libraries. It is cross-platform but useful for Linux based distributions. It is only a pure Python wrapper, a thin layer over existing back-ends. Its strategy should work on most Linux distributions: a lot of back-ends are wrapped, if at least one exists then it works, if not then one back-end should be installed. Performance and interactivity are not important for this library.
- Features:
- Cross-platform wrapper
- Capturing the whole desktop
- Capturing an area
- saving to PIL or Pillow image memory
- some back-ends are based on this discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69645/take-a-screenshot-via-a-python-script-linux
- pure Python library
- supported python versions: 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5
- Plugin based, it has wrappers for various back-ends:
- scrot
- ImageMagick
- PyGTK
- PIL or Pillow (only on windows)
- PyQt4
- PySide
- wxPython
- Quartz (Mac)
- screencapture (Mac)
- gnome-screenshot
- time: 0.1s - 1.0s
- Known problems:
- ImageMagick creates blackbox on some systems
- PyGTK back-end does not check $DISPLAY -> not working with Xvfb
- Similar projects:
grab and show the whole screen:
#-- include('examples/showgrabfullscreen.py') --# import pyscreenshot as ImageGrab if __name__ == '__main__': # grab fullscreen im = ImageGrab.grab() # save image file im.save('screenshot.png') # show image in a window im.show() #-#
to start the example:
python -m pyscreenshot.examples.showgrabfullscreen
grab and show the part of the screen:
#-- include('examples/showgrabbox.py')--# import pyscreenshot as ImageGrab if __name__ == '__main__': # part of the screen im = ImageGrab.grab(bbox=(10, 10, 510, 510)) # X1,Y1,X2,Y2 im.show() #-#
to start the example:
python -m pyscreenshot.examples.showgrabbox
sudo apt-get install python-pip sudo apt-get install python-pil sudo pip install pyscreenshot # optional back-ends sudo apt-get install scrot imagemagick python-gtk2 python-qt4 python-wxgtk2.8 python-pyside # optional for examples sudo pip install entrypoint2
# as root pip uninstall pyscreenshot
Back-end performance:
The performance can be checked with pyscreenshot.check.speedtest. Example: #-- sh('python -m pyscreenshot.check.speedtest --virtual-display 2>/dev/null') --# n=10 ------------------------------------------------------ wx 1.2 sec ( 120 ms per call) pygtk 1.2 sec ( 124 ms per call) pyqt 1.4 sec ( 136 ms per call) scrot 0.93 sec ( 93 ms per call) imagemagick 0.67 sec ( 67 ms per call) pyside 1.3 sec ( 133 ms per call) gnome-screenshot 18 sec ( 1817 ms per call) #-#
Print versions:
#-- sh('python -m pyscreenshot.check.versions 2> /dev/null ')--# pyscreenshot 0.4.2 wx 2.8.12.1 pygtk 2.28.6 pyqt 4.10.4 scrot 0.8 imagemagick 6.7.7 pyside 1.2.1 gnome-screenshot 3.26.0 #-#
#-- sh('python -m pyscreenshot.check.speedtest --help')--# usage: speedtest.py [-h] [-v] [--debug] optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -v, --virtual-display --debug set logging level to DEBUG #-#
#-- sh('python -m pyscreenshot.check.versions --help')--# usage: versions.py [-h] [--debug] optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --debug set logging level to DEBUG #-#