Here at 24x7digital, we have been having a great time tinkering with our iPhones and learning a great new programming platform.  We have also had our share of frustrations preparing information for submission to to iTunesConnect.apple.com, the backend portal to the iTunes App Store.  Apple wants screenshots of your new iPhone apps to display in the iTunes App Store, but they restrict the format of the uploads to either JPEG or TIFF format and also desire certain dimensions which correspond to just the content portion of the iPhone display.

There are a few ways to capture screenshots from your iPhone.

1. USE THE MAC's BUILT-IN SCREEN GRABBER: While running the iPhone SDK's iPhone Simulator, you can use either the Grab program or the COMMAND-SHIFT-4 keystroke to invoke the Mac's screen grabber.  Unfortunately, it generates PNG format, and you will most likely need to do some post-processing to crop the image to the correct dimensions. You can open these images in Preview and then resave them as JPEG or TIFF if you are planning to upload them to the iPhone App Store.

2. USE XCODE's ORGANIZER:  While developing with XCode and a tethered iPhone, you can use XCode's Organizer window's Screenshot tab to capture screenshots.  Simply press the CAPTURE button in XCode.  Again, this method creates PNG format, but you can open these images in Preview and then resave them as TIFF. The dimensions for portrait-mode will be the correct iPhone dimensions of 320x480 pixels, but you will need to rotate landscape-mode screenshots, and also resave these images as JPEG or TIFF if you are planning to upload them to the iPhone App Store.

3. USE THE IPHONE'S BUILT-IN SCREEN GRABBER: You can take a screenshot directly on the iPhone by holding the POWER button and pressing the HOME button.  You will hear a satisfying camera sound and the screenshot will be added to your Photo's Camera Roll where it can be emailed to yourself.  Alternatively, use Image Capture after tethering your iPhone and you can view the thumbnails in Image Capture. Interestingly, this method created JPEG format files which can be uploaded directly to the iTunes App Store, though landscape images will still need to be rotated beforehand.  We have also noticed some slight artifacts in certain JPEG screenshots due to the lossy compression.

4. SHAMELESS PLUG - USE 24x7digital's iPhoneScreenGrabber: Our inexpensive developer tool grabs high-quality LZW-non-lossy-compressed TIFF screenshots directly from the iPhone Simulator.  These screenshots are perfectly cropped and rotated and ready for upload to the iTunes App Store. Streamline your workflow by using iPhoneScreenGrabber today!