I have since uninstalled and reinstalled both via PPA and Ubuntu Software Center.

Now, as of today, it almost seems like it’s trying to work but instead of a black screen, it’s now showing a featureless desktop, just the background wallpaper, not even the activities bar. Earlier it was showing what appeared to be a saved state, perhaps stuck in “redo previous screenshot” mode? When I captured the desktop I thought it worked, until I realized the web page I was on was not what was showing up in the screenshot, and when I moved the software center around and took another screenshot, it appeared to be stuck in it’s previous location. I don’t know if “redo previous screenshot” is holding that in a buffer, part of the clipboard, or if it simply means redo the last screenshot action, and if it was a selection, to capture the same selected area, not necessarily the exact same content as that may have changed.

I have not yet tried a clean re-install of Ubuntu since the upgrade. I may do so soon, and probably drop back to 12.04 as well. Shutter is not the only program I’ve had problems with since upgrading, though a clean 12.10 install may resolve all these issues.After updating Ubuntu from 12.04 to 12.10, all captures coming from Shutter (0.89.1) are black. Capturing a selection, the overlay screen that was translucent in 12.04, is completely black in 12.10, the zoom window crosshair is there, but the window is black. When capturing the desktop the the gnome-shell activities bar is visible… well, the “Activities” hot corner, the time/date in the center, and the logged in user in the top-right corner are visible, the rest is black. None of the extensions are visible on the activities bar.

Bug is reported here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/shutter/+bug/1075101