My screenshots go directly to my clipboard, which works for me most of the time, so I'm not trying to change that behavior.
What I want to do is paste said screenshot into a folder of my choosing.
Finder doesn't seem to let me paste my screenshots from my clipboard into folders, so now I'm looking for a workaround that uses as few steps as possible.
The suboptimal Approach: I've found that I can open these images from my clipboard in Preview, but then I have to re-save them to a desired folder, which is too cumbersome to be considered a solution.
What I'm looking for: Something with fewer steps than the above approach. I just need to get the image from my clipboard into a folder of my choosing. If you can do better, you'll save me and others a lot of time.
Best Answer
I created an automator workflow to solve this problem
Bottom line: the solution allows you to save an image from the clipboard anywhere with one keystroke (you have to show it where to go in the save dialogue, obviously)
The workflow opens preview, creates a new file from the clipboard, and saves the file (opening the save as dialogue). You can then put it wherever you want. Here's the link to a zip with the workflow. To run the workflow, you'll probably need to approve automator with certain permissions (it'll pop up if and ask for approval, so don't worry if you don't run into this problem). Open the zip, then double click the file (make sure there's an image in the clipboard). A new file should open in preview and ask to be saved.
To create a shortcut, just go to 'keyboard' under system preferences > 'shortcuts' > 'services' and setup the shortcut.