screenshot batch processing script or application

July 15, 2008 8:46 AM

Looking for a recommendation for a free / open source script or application to batch capture/process screen shots of web sites, ideally from a list of urls.

(python, ruby, perl, php, processing, etc. all acceptable options. OS ambivalent. Command line ok, too.)

posted by sunlightfoundation to Technology (7 answers total)

I have good experiences with webshot, for Windows, though it uses the view of Internet Explorer; and some sites don't like their best in Internet Explorer.

It's free, and can do batches of dumps, from a text file.
posted by ijsbrand at 8:53 AM on July 15, 2008

like = look
posted by ijsbrand at 8:53 AM on July 15, 2008

Response by poster: I came across webshot before I posted the question, but thought it only did greyscale in the free version. Seems that's only the command line version. I'm checking out the GUI + Free version right now. Thanks!
posted by sunlightfoundation at 9:06 AM on July 15, 2008

this is pretty easy to do on a Linux machine with ImageMagick installed. If I had one here at work I'd write you a script, but basically:

#!/bin/bash

URLFILE=somefile.txt
BROWSER=/usr/bin/firefox
# 'import' is part of the ImageMagick package
SCREENGRAB=import
# so is 'convert'
PROCESS=convert

URLS=`cat $URLFILE`

for url in $URLS
do
$BROWSER $url
SCREENGRAB <screengrab options>
PROCESS <processing options>
done
posted by xbonesgt at 9:08 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

In Mac OS X, type man screencapture for the options for the screencapture command.

Mac OS X is UNIX, and the Terminal runs the bash shell, so you have access to that scripting environment, as well as perl and python, of course. So you can integrate screencapture with existing scripts.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:47 AM on July 15, 2008

Maybe something like this might help?
posted by the_dude at 1:33 PM on July 15, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks Blazecock Pileon, I am on a mac and I didn't consider the option to use screencapture. I'll give that a shot.
posted by sunlightfoundation at 9:18 PM on July 15, 2008