I’m working on my demo site and needed to capture a screenshot of the iphone simulator running Safari with my demo site mobile version open. I figured I would do the standard mac thing:

Command-Shift-4

Results:

iPhone Simulator with "dirty corners"

But, that would capture the square corners of what is behind the simulator and also would possible lead to the loss of the clean drop shadow when cropping, so I decided to see if there was any other options?

To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4, then press the Spacebar. The cursor will change to a camera, and you can move it around the screen.

Results when copied and pasted into Adobe Photoshop:

iPhone Simulator with "black corners"

Great I figured, this should be smart enough to be aware of transparencies, so I should be able to paste directly into Photoshop. (by the way to copy directly to clipboard, instead of creating a new file: Add Control to the two shortcuts above to place the screen shot on the clipboard instead of saving it to the desktop. )

About to give up, I decide to try one more time, this time without the Control button pressed, to have OSX generate a new file. Low and behold, I open up this last resort, and it is a prefectly transparent with drop shadow png.

Results:

iPhone Simulator with "perfect transparency"

In conclusion, if you want to capture iPhone simulation stills use Command-Shift-4, followed by Spacebar to get the camera cusor, select the simulator and open the newly created png ready for use.

Final Image:

iPhone Simualtor, Perfect Cutout

Resources:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/screencapturemac/ht/macscreenshot.htm